Romney Earned 500 Times the Average Worker in 2010

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney released his 2010 tax returns yesterday and America learned he paid an effective tax rate of 15 percent on $21.6 million of income. Slate took this information and put an interesting spin on it: "How long would it take the GOP candidate to earn what you made in a year?" It allows you to compare your own annual income to Romney's.

Being the salary experts we are at PayScale.com, we decided to take some common American jobs and utilize the calculator on Slate's article to show the disparity between Mitt and the average American worker. In addition, using the tax rate calculator provided by CPA Site Solutions, we will also show the estimated effective tax rates paid by these average American workers.

Are you an average American worker and wondering if you are earning what you are worth? Find out with a free PayScale Salary Report.

Trends in US Wages: The PayScale Index

Today we launched our fifth release of The PayScale Index, which tracks changes in the price of labor since 2006. And for the first time since 2008, wage increases are being seen across the board.

Previously, wage growth winners were typically in just high-tech and energy industries, while workers in most other industries experienced no growth or even a loss in wages. However, the tides have turned as even workers in previously failing industries, such as construction and manufacturing, are seeing wage increases.

In this post I will look deeper into the wage trends experienced by different industries, job families and cities. These wage trends are useful for individuals to understand how overall market prices for broad labor markets are changing on average, but they won't define your individual market price. To find out what you are worth given your job title, experience level, educational background and numerous other factors, take the comprehensive PayScale Salary Survey.

CEO Pay vs. Typical Worker Pay

We recently released an insightful bit of data that looks at the ratio of pay for Fortune 50 CEOs to the pay of employees at their respective companies. The results are unsettling -- on average the Fortune 50 CEOs earn 213 times more than their workers.

Who tops the list for the biggest ratio and which CEO earns pay closest to their employees? See the answers below...

Trends in Tips

Tips are a way of life for many service industry jobs. In fact, for some jobs tips make up over 50 percent of a worker's total take-home pay. During tough economic times these workers often suffer from a decrease in their tips, both due to a decrease in consumerism and to a decrease in generosity.

This is exactly what we found in our Tipping Study in 2009 -- the year after the beginning of The Great Recession, tips on average fell. However, the opposite is often true during good times. Tips rise as consumers feel their budgets loosen, causing both an increase in consumerism and a potential increase in generosity.

Today PayScale released our sixth annual Tipping Study, which highlights over 90 jobs that receive tips, the typical amount of these tips, the percent of total take-home pay from tips and the frequency of tips.

Do you work in a job where pay is dominated by tips and curious about how your pay compares to others like you? Find out with a free PayScale salary report.

Time to Ask for a Raise? What the PayScale Index Says

PayScale recently released the Q3 2011 PayScale Index. The PayScale Index tracks pay trends by location, industry and job category. A salary index that says how much pay has changed in the last year seems like a great source for figuring out if you should ask for a raise. But, how should you use it?

The PayScale Index is part of what you need to ask for a salary increase, but not everything. In this post, we will discuss how to figure out whether you are due a raise.

Before you can ask for a raise, you need to know what you are worth. Find out with a free PayScale salary report.

Recent College Graduates' Pay Down in 2011

As part of the research for the 2010-2011 PayScale College Salary Report, we looked at the pay trends of recent college graduates and found startling results.

With the unemployment rate for college graduates at 4.3% in August, less than half the national average, you would think the strong demand would translate into higher wages.

While the graduates of some schools continue to bring in the big bucks, and overall earnings of bachelor's graduates are substantially higher than high school grads, the data show that all is not well in the market of recent college graduates.

College degree or not, are you being paid what you are worth? Find out with a free PayScale salary report.

Is It Time for a Career "Plan B"?

It has been two years since the recession officially ended in the summer of 2009 and economic expansion began again. However, the US economy clearly isn't back to where it was at the end of the last boom in 2007. And, there are a lot of signs it is not getting there any time soon in some areas of the country, jobs, and industries.

How is your career coming along? If you are one of the many people who have been looking for work for the last two years and not finding the job you want, it may be time to take stock and adjust your goals. Simply put, you may need to move, switch industries, take a lower paying job, or all three, to get back into the workforce.

Curious about your current career and your position in the labor market? Complete a simple PayScale Salary Survey to see how you compares to others like you.

PayScale College Salary Report: Top Schools for 2011

Recently we released the 2011-2012 PayScale College Salary Report. There are dozens of different topics in this report: top schools for mid- or early career earnings, majors that pay, top state universities, schools that produce the highest fraction of CEOs, and the list goes on.

In this post, I'll look at some of the interesting facts and and trends behind the numbers. Are wages for college grads going up or down? Which schools top the list for 2011, and how do their graduates' earnings compare with a earnings last year and back in 2008, when we first did this annual report?

Whether you are a graduate of a top university or just an average one, what really matters is, are you earning what you are worth? Find out with a free PayScale salary report.

Why We'd Rather Be in Canada: Wages Up

With the release of the second quarter (Q2) 2011 PayScale Index, we added tracking of national pay trends for Canada. The striking difference is how much better Canadian wages have bounced back from the recession than in the United States.

In this blog post, we will look at Canadian trends in pay over the last 5 years, and see what the PayScale data about Canadian wages through the first six months of 2011 tell us about how the demand for workers is recovering.

Finally, we will look at other economic measures, like unemployment and gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Canada, and see if Canadian workers' wages are subject to the same supply and demand forces we have been seeing in the PayScale Index for the United States.

National pay trends are interesting, but are wages for your job trending up? Find out with a free PayScale salary report.

Top IT Employers

We recently released a story comparing IT Employers across several factors, such as typical pay, stress levels, typical age, gender breakdown, etc.

There are some similarities across the employers (e.g. they pay well compared to the typical U.S. employer, they offer generally more flexible schedules, etc.), however there are some stark differences. For example, the median age of IBM workers is 44, while those at Facebook have a median age of 26 and boasts the youngest workforce among top IT companies.

Are you in the IT world and wondering if you are earning what you are worth? Find out with a free PayScale Salary Report.