Free Republic

The U.S. is one of the highest-paying countries globally, but the average earnings differ significantly between industries.This infographic, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, ranks average annual salaries across major U.S. industries using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as of March 2025. The data covers private industries, and annual salary figures are estimated by multiplying average weekly earnings by 52.Which Industries Pay the Most?The average annual salary across all U.S. industries (ex. government employees) is around $64,000. In the utilities sector, the highest-paying industry, the average employee makes nearly $114,000 annually.Here’s a look at the highest and lowest-paying...

EXCLUSIVE: A top DOGE leader in the Senate is trying to reel in a massive federal grant from a nonprofit focused on promoting fishing, boating and outdoors that she alleges is being used to pad executive salaries, a characterization the organization rejected. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and her colleagues have been scouring federal grants for appearances of waste, fraud or abuse of taxpayer funds, and came upon a $27 million grant to the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF). More than $26 million of the grant had been paid out, and long-term figures showed RBFF received $164 million in funding...

Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said. David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been...

Roughly 25,000 striking dockworkers at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts of the U.S. are rallying for higher pay and stronger guardrails around their jobs being automated out of existence. Members of the International Longshoremen's Association, or ILA, a union representing the dockworkers, walked off the job Tuesday for the first time in nearly 50 years as they push for "the kind of wages we deserve," ILA President Harold Daggett said in a social media post on Tuesday. Those wages, union officials argue, should factor in the torrid inflation that eroded dockworkers' paychecks under their now lapsed labor contract...

Texas school superintendent salaries continue to rise, despite falling enrollments and flagging student performance, leaving taxpayers wondering what they are getting for their money. Newly released Texas Education Agency data for the 2023-24 school year shows eight superintendents with salaries above $400,000 and another 81 receiving $300,000 or more. Texas’ highest-paid school superintendent was again Cypress-Fairbanks ISD’s Mark Henry, who pulled down a base salary of $536,775 before retiring in December 2023. Last school year, 77 superintendents received taxpayer-funded salaries above $300,000, with five making $400,000 or more. During the 2021-22 school year, 60 superintendents scored salaries at or above...

>One Walmart truck driver says he has 15 years left of working, and he intends to spend them hauling loads for Walmart. “Barring a lottery win or marrying a sugar mama, I don’t see myself going anywhere,” said the Texas-based driver, who asked not to have his name included as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.Such loyalty to a single company is unusual in trucking, an industry notorious for massive turnover. And the Texas trucker isn’t alone in his dedication to Walmart. One of the best jobs you can get in trucking is at Walmart....

A new bill introduced by a Florida congresswoman aims to incentivize states to increase minimum teacher salaries as the country’s education system faces a growing need for educators. The American Teacher Act was introduced last week by Rep. Frederica S. Wilson, chair of the Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee. The bill would work to entice states to increase the minimum K-12 teacher salary to $60,000 through a federal grant program. The bill is an attempt to persuade educators to remain in the profession as a national teacher shortage impacts districts across the country — a problem that has been...

The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows buried a report showing that most Americans currently live paycheck to paycheck as the cost of living continues to skyrocket. Fintech marketplace bank LendingClub released a report March 3, which stated that “[t]he number of consumers living paycheck to paycheck has increased steadily since April 2021 and was 64% in January 2022 – 12 percentage points higher than April 2021.” It got worse: “The data show[] that 48% of consumers earning more than $100,000 per year reported living paycheck to paycheck in January 2022 — up from 42% in December 2021.” Of...

The high wages of teachers in Boston, where nearly 3,000 are paid six-figure salaries, reflects the strength of their union and suggests that a district plagued by “chronic underperformance” may be more geared toward the adults running it than the children it serves, watchdogs say. A Herald analysis of payroll data found that 2,905 teachers earn more than $100,000 annually, compared to the average per capita income of $44,690 in Boston in 2019, the most recent year for which the U.S. Census Bureau has statistics. Those teachers earned six figures in a city where 18.9% of the population – about...

The investigation continues. That’s the official word from the University of Massachusetts about their very thorough investigation of some racist emails, a probe that was announced with such fanfare and righteous indignation earlier this fall but now appears to be sputtering out, with no suspects. No suspects? How can that possibly be?..., I saw that ZooMass had decided to get ahead of the curve with “An Update into the Investigation of Racist Emails.” “To date no perpetrator has been identified,” the statement read. “It is not uncommon for the results of a cyber inquiry to be inconclusive and it is...

Every year, the state controller publishes thousands of public employees’ salaries, from nearly every city, county and special district, on its transparency-focused “Government Compensation in California” website. Here’s what you won’t find: about two-thirds of the Golden State’s school systems. Unlike other public agencies in the state, California’s schools can choose whether to participate because of a loophole in state law. Most do not even reply to the controller’s requests. This year, of the 1,915 requests sent to education employers, only 447 provided the appropriate information. Another 128 responded, but with either incomplete or unacceptable records, according to the state...

More than 90% of all countries have some kind of minimum wage legislation.The debate about whether establishing a minimum wage is a good thing or a bad thing has been raging for over a century, but the concept is so common nowadays that it even sounds obvious that there should be a minimum wage. Many have trouble imagining the world without it.However, the truth is that there are a few countries without this purportedly crucial legislation, and they seem to be doing just fine.There’s one thing that the best economies in the world have in common: low government involvement. For...

This week, our award is going to the city leadership of the nation’s capital, for continuing to lobby for a coronavirus bailout package that would exceed $3 billion, while spending more than $1 billion annually on some of the most exorbitant government salaries in the nation. Like most other American cities, the District is required to balance its budget annually. This year, due to the coronavirus pandemic, city officials are claiming a $1.5 billion budget deficit and asking Congress for $3.15 billion over two years to alleviate the city’s financials woes. The mayor of the capital, for instance, is paid...

WYCKOFF, NJ — Six-figure salaries are no longer uncommon for educators in New Jersey. Including in the Wyckoff School District where several teachers make more than $100,000 annually. That is according to an annual list of teachers that make that amount and their exact salaries for 2018, a list the state Department of Education released recently. The list barely had any teachers on it more than a decade ago. It's also a small fraction of the more than 100,000 people who teach in public and charter schools in this state. But the highest earners also come from all different schools...

As an heiress to the Disney fortune, anything Abigail Disney says about the brand beloved by millions worldwide garners attention. And she’s calling out Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger for his nearly $66 million yearly salary, saying he isn’t doing enough to rectify the huge gap between his own earnings and that of other Disney workers. “Bob needs to understand he's an employee, just the same as the people scrubbing gum off the sidewalk are employees,” Disney said during an interview with the Yahoo News show Through Her Eyes. “And they're entitled to all the same dignity and human...

As summer approaches and school comes to a close, many college graduates (if they aren't already) will be hunting for jobs. And they'll want to put their college degree to good use. According to data collected by LinkedIn, some of the top college majors that lead to the most "different kinds of jobs" include business administration and management, marketing and psychology, among others. It's not a bad time to search for career opportunities, either. In April, U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs — the 119th month of straight gains — and unemployment fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest rate since 1969....

>On Monday, more than 4,000 teachers in Denver went on strike for the first time in 25 years, after failing to reach a satisfactory pay deal with administrators. The average American teacher makes $44,000 starting out and approximately $68,000 at the upper end of their earning potential. In comparison, teachers in Luxembourg can make up to $137,000. Here's a look at how teacher salaries across countries stack up at different experience levels. On Monday, more than 4,000 teachers in Denver went on strike for the first time in 25 years, after failing to reach a satisfactory pay deal with administrators....

In less than two years, the Illinois tollway has hired six Republican insiders for high-level jobs that collectively pay nearly $916,000 a year, including a former elected official, political operatives and the relative of a state GOP leader. That troubles some government watchdogs who say they are concerned about favoritism in an agency with a history of patronage. Tollway officials said the agency is staffed with qualified professionals. "More and more the Illinois tollway is becoming the 'Who's Who' of Republican political hires," said Illinois Campaign for Political Reform Chairwoman Susan Garrett, a former Democratic state senator. Tollway spokesman Dan...

The only speaker standing between state budget officers and the opening cocktail hour at a Washington conference was the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. What he said left no one in a celebratory mood. Medicaid costs, said then-Secretary Michael Leavitt, were projected to grow so fast that within 10 years they would “crowd out virtually every other category of spending.” State spending on higher education, infrastructure and safety, he predicted, would all get squeezed.

The Department of Justice announced Thursday it has filed a lawsuit against a Colorado corporation for allegedly discriminating against U.S. workers. The complaint alleges that in 2016, Crop Production discriminated against at least three United States citizens by refusing to employ them as seasonal technicians in El Campo, Texas, because Crop Production preferred to hire temporary foreign workers under the H-2A visa program. “In the spirit of President Trump’s Executive Order on Buy American and Hire American, the Department of Justice will not tolerate employers who discriminate against U.S. workers because of a desire to hire temporary foreign visa holders,”...