Forget working hard for the money. Some factors that influence salary are beyond your control

It’s a rare individual who wouldn’t like to make a bit (or a boatload) more money each year. It’s not as if most people don’t try: They work hard. They endeavor to boost their performance—and, it seems to follow, their pay—with training programs and career coaches and workplace mentors. They even schedule weekly tête-à-têtes with their bosses to measure their progress and reassess benchmarks.

The truth is that some factors correlated to higher pay are impossible for a person to control. Studies show that taller people make more money, but can people increase their height? Similarly, can a man become a lefty after decades as a right-handed man? Can a woman become a man? What’s more, there are factors in how you behave outside the office that are associated with higher pay. For example: If you like rum in your Coke, you’ll make more money. (It is, at least, a good argument against prohibition.)

Men seem particularly affected by salary advantages and disadvantages that aren’t related to work performance. Consider the premium paid to some lefties. While researchers at Lafayette College and Johns Hopkins University found no wage difference between left-handed and right-handed women, left-handed men who have some college education average about 13 percent more than right-handed men. Lefty males who are college graduates average as much as 20 percent more than their right-handed counterparts.

A report from the Reason Foundation found that while male and female drinkers make more than nondrinkers, men who hit the bar at least once a month—thereby satisfying the definition of social drinkers—seem to make even more.

Married men tend to make more than men who have never been married. Researchers at the Federal Reserve of St. Louis found there may be a few reasons for this. For one thing, employers may have a bias in favor of married men because marital status might signify a man’s stability or responsibility. Old-fashioned or not, another possibility is that marriage frees men up to focus on work, rather than on household tasks. The most likely reason, however, is that the observable qualities that appeal to an employer are similar to those that appeal to a mate—characteristics such as background, education, and appearance.

Men who choose to go into Christian ministry will find that they dominate the field but make less than their female counterparts. A survey of church employees conducted by Christian Today International’s Your Church ministry found that women made up only 6.3 percent of full-time solo pastor positions, but they reported 10.4 percent higher total compensation.

Women are generally acknowledged to be underdogs in the compensation world, but a report from American Association of University Women Education Foundation noted that women choose college majors that pay less—majors such as education, psychology, and healthcare. Men choose more lucrative majors, like engineering and mathematics.

The pay difference has, however, undergone a surprising shift in some metropolitan areas. Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, found that New York women in their 20s earned an average of $7,000 less than their male counterparts in 1970 but were making about $5,000 more in 2005.

A 2007 study from University of Northern Iowa looked at 2000 census data and found that cohabitating lesbians earn about 10 percent more annually than married women. They also earn more than cohabitating, unmarried, heterosexual women.

Perhaps the research that suggests the most potential for control over pay has to do with hours logged. Two MSN-Zogby polls found 37 percent of workers with household incomes of $100,000 or more report working between 41 and 50 hours a week, while only 8 percent of those with household income less than $25,000 work as many hours. Of course, there’s plenty that could explain this, as illness, old age, and disability can affect a worker’s hours. But there may be some hope that putting in the time will pay off.

Liz Wolgemoth

If you had a growing concern over out-sourcing and almost every single product you buy being made in China, the trend is only getting hotter. The newest phase will include cars made in China. At least eight cars made by Chinese companies, so far unfamiliar to the American market will soon make their way to the US. Will they compete with standards of US, Japanes, and European cars? Probably not, but they will be more financially attractive. Good news is that in order to be part of the US market, they will have to stick to safety regulations.

Acquiring an established brand might be the easiest way for Chinese companies to get a foothold with upscale U.S. car buyers, because in that segment perception trumps reality, experts say, and even five or 10 years down the road, the idea of a Chinese-branded luxury car made in China might be too tough of a sell with those shoppers.

“The public will buy most brands that are sold to and managed by other companies no matter where they’re located, so long as they maintain the same ’shape and feel’ to the product,” R.L. Polk’s Miller says. “The question here is whether the consumer will look under the hood and see a lot of Chinese script on the engine, or are they going to be able to tell that it’s still a Volvo?”Forbes

Is the definition of middle class moving up, down, or getting broader every day? In today’s economy the term is so vauge that unless it’s specified to some extent it really means nothing. In everyone’s head the term is completely different and I would say that it’s not even a matter of salaries going higher or lower, but rather a matter of left to right in terms of the differences. For example, while you might think that $150,000 salary a year is a lot, for someone living modestly who owns a home in LA or NY city, it’s really not that much.

Where it really makes a difference is what has come up with the new election campaign. We have every nominee speaking out about how they will help the middle class, yet how the presidential candidates define the term “middle class” is what will ultimately make the difference. Will someone making $100,000 and struggling to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in a cosmopolitan area be considered eligible for the tax breaks and all the other great promised benefits, or will they simply be placed in a higher tax bracket, ultimately even worse off?

WASHINGTON - Quick quiz: Which citizen belongs to the middle class?

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_A factory worker making $60,000.

_A lawyer making $200,000.

_A single mother of two earning $19,000.

Answer: All three — and just about everyone else under the sun, according to the world of presidential campaign politics.

Right and left, the presidential hopefuls are casting themselves as champions of a middle class that they define according to their own convenience. We’re talking No Taxpayer Left Behind here.

In appealing to the common man and woman, they can abandon common sense.

Even Democrat John Edwards, noted for plain talk about plain old poverty, says the thrust of his proposals is for the “middle-class pillars of saving, work” and “regular families.”

These candidates are on to something. Americans love to think of themselves as middle class, and so it has become an elastic concept that draws in everyone between dirt poor and filthiest rich.

In the political calculus, it means this: The middle class is everyone who would be helped by my plan. And no one who would be hurt.

Republican Mitt Romney takes the middle class conceit probably the farthest, well into six figures.

“We’re going to have to reduce taxes on middle-income Americans immediately,” he says.

“Zero rate on middle class savings,” he says, “to make it easier for the middle class to save.”

An ode to little pink houses?

Not exactly. His tax plan says anyone with adjusted gross income under $200,000 — that’s after certain deductions — should be relieved of all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends. Certainly $200,000 a year doesn’t buy what it used to. But it’s still easy street.

Romney and the others break no rules here, as much as they stretch credulity.

There’s no accepted standard of what constitutes the middle class, although it’s safe to say that the multimillionaire former Massachusetts governor and most others in the race are well above it in their own lives.

Elpasotimes.com writes about the growing phenomenom of companies offering house based positions. The companies screen their potential customers to see if they are suited to working at home. Employees working from home allow businesses to save up to 30% on investments.

IDC estimates the United States now has 150,000 outsourced home-based agents, and says the number is projected to grow to 300,000 by 2010.

Datamonitor, a London business information company, estimates that more than 47,000 outsourced home-based agents working at least 20 hours a week are employed worldwide, more than 90 percent of them in the United States. It
Advertisementprojects that number to grow to more than 223,000 by 2012.

The numbers from both forecasts are for home-based agents working for call-center contractors. They don’t include home-based agents working directly for product and service companies, such as airlines, banks and telephone companies.

Even with the dramatic growth in home-based agents, traditional call centers are
expected to continue as the biggest chunk of the customer-contact market.

This dynamic creates a friendly workable environment for disabled and home bound employees.

Penelope Trunk is a columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance. She suggests that in the near future things will change.

The end of office life

People will work from home, from their friends’ homes, from the beach, all the time. The need to have a home office will decrease because Generation Y will never really learn how to work 9 to 5 in an office anyway. They grew up blending homework and friends while they multi-tasked in their bedroom, and once they enter the workforce, they extend this behavior to everywhere — work life and home life will be blended in a way that makes each more rewarding.

We can already see a growing movement of mobile jobs where people can work at any time they choose from any location. Think back to NBC’s recently run feature of an entire large sized office where all employees were excused in order to work from anywhere they wished and only come in for meetings.

source: BrazenCareerist