page_title: Employee compensation in the United States
section_title: Wages
hierarchical_section_title: Employee compensation in the United States / Salaries, wages, commissions / Wages
caption_attribution_description: English: Unemployment compared to wages
context_page_description: Employer compensation in the United States refers to the cash compensation and benefits that an employee receives in exchange for the service they perform for their employer. Approximately 93% of the working population in the United States are employees earning a salary or wage.
  Typically, cash compensation consists of a wage or salary, and may include commissions or bonuses. Benefits consist of retirement plans, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, vacation, employee stock ownership plans, etc.
  Compensation can be fixed and/or variable, and is often both. Variable pay is based on the performance of the employee. Commissions, incentives, and bonuses are forms of variable pay.
  Benefits can also be divided into company-paid and employee-paid. Some, such as holiday pay, vacation pay, etc., are usually paid for by the firm. Others are often paid, at least in part, by employees—a notable example is medical insurance.
  Compensation in the US is shaped by law, tax policy, and history.
context_section_description: Wage data (e.g. median wages) for different occupations in the US can be found from the US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, broken down into subgroups (e.g. marketing managers, financial managers, etc.)
  by state, metropolitan areas, and gender.
  In the United States, wages for most workers are set by market forces, or else by collective bargaining, where a labor union negotiates on the workers' behalf. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes a minimum wage at the federal level that all states must abide by, among other provisions. Fourteen states and a number of cities have set their own minimum wage rates that are higher than the federal level. For certain federal or state government contracts, employers must pay the so-called prevailing wage as determined according to the Davis-Bacon Act or its state equivalent. Activists have undertaken to promote the idea of a living wage rate which accounts for living expenses and other basic necessities, setting the living wage rate much higher than current minimum wage laws require.
  "The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek."
caption: Unemployment compared to wages
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