Earnings and Compensation

When employees provide labor, they are are compensated by means of annual salaries, hourly wages, commissions, piece rates, tips, or bonuses. Within every occupation, earnings vary by experience, responsibility, performance, tenure, and geographic area.

Benefits account for a significant portion of total compensation costs to employers. Benefits such as paid vacation, health insurance, and sick leave are widespread. Although not as common as traditional benefits, flexible hours and profit-sharing plans may be offered to attract and retain highly qualified workers. Less common benefits also include childcare, tuition for dependents, housing assistance, summers off, and free or discounted merchandise or services.

General Information

Employment is a two-party contract between an employer and an employee. A employer will typically choose productive tasks for an employer to do and aim to make a profit. A employee will provide labor and will usually want some income in return for the labor they provide.

In economics employment is shown by the real flow of labour (human resources) to the producers and income to the households, with the trade of consumer spending by households for goods and services meeting the losses of both parties.

Unemployment is a negative social problem that leads to poverty and a reduction in quality of life.

Employment will usally be at-will, meaning the employer has the right to stop employing the employee for any reason. It is generally presumed that the products an employee produces with the labour they provide to an employer remains the property of an employer, but issues may arise, such as intellectual property which is when the ideas of employees become the property of the employer.

Definition

Job: Noun

• A task undertaken regularly as a means of making money.


• A position in which a person may be employed.


• A specific task or duty that must be done for some reason.


• The perfomance of a piece of work.


• A specific task or duty that must be paid for.


• (Informal) A task that is hard to do.


• Something that is done or the product of such work.


• (Informal) A situation. The date was always going to be a bad job.


• (Informal) An illegal task.


• (Informal) A task that is poorly done.

Employment Statistics

Important employment statistics include the number of jobs that the occupation provided and the number or proportion of self-employed workers in the occupation. The geographic distribution of jobs and the proportion of part-time workers (those working less than 35 hours a week) may also be important. Some occupations, such as textile, apparel, and furnishings occupations, are primarily based in certain U.S. states or countries.

In the United States the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Stastics develops the National Employment Matrix, which presents current and projected employment for 284 detailed industries and 725 detailed occupations. Data in the matrix comes primarily from the OES survey, which reports employment of wage and salary workers for each occupation in almost all industries. The CPS survey provides information on the total number of self-employed and unpaid family workers in each occupation. The CPS also provides employment data on agriculture and private households. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) furnishes employment data on Federal Government workers.

Part Time Job

In Hong Kong and China, there is a new way for part time job/task matching through Internet web 2.0 world. We call this as "witkey".

A typical part time web site for web 2.0 world is 聚材網 - Part Time Job website - www.wiskill.com

Jop Outlook

In planning for the future, it is important to consider potential job opportunities. This section describes the factors that will result in employment growth or decline. Projecting occupational employment is the final step in the employment projections process. (A more detailed description of the projections process is discussed in the Handbook section entitled “Assumptions and Methods Used in Preparing Employment Projections.”) The job outlook section reflects the occupational projections in the National Employment Matrix. Each occupation is assigned a descriptive phrase on the basis of its projected percent change in employment over the 2002–12 period. (All of the phrases are listed at the end of this section.)

A number of factors are examined in developing employment projections and updating the job outlook section. One factor is job growth or decline in industries that employ a significant percentage of workers in the occupation. If workers are concentrated in a rapidly growing industry, their employment will likely also grow quickly. For example, the growing need for business expertise is fueling demand for consulting services. Hence, management, scientific, and technical consulting services is projected to be among the fastest growing industries through 2012. Projected rapid growth in this industry helps to spur faster than average growth in employment of management analysts.

Demographic changes, which affect what services are required, can influence occupational growth or decline. For example, an aging population demands more healthcare workers, from registered nurses to pharmacists.

Technological change is another key factor. New technology can either create new job opportunities or eliminate jobs by making workers obsolete. The Internet has increased the demand for workers in the computer and information technology fields, such as computer support specialists and systems administrators. However, the Internet also has adversely affected travel agents, because many people now book tickets, hotels, and rental cars online.

Another factor affecting job growth or decline is changes in business practices, such as the outsourcing of work or the restructuring of businesses. In the past few years, insurance carriers have been outsourcing sales and claims adjuster jobs to large, 24-hour call centers in order to reduce costs. Corporate restructuring also has made many organizations “flatter,” resulting in fewer middle management positions.

The substitution of one product or service for another can affect employment projections. For example, consumption of plastic products has grown as they have been substituted for metal goods in many consumer and manufactured products in recent years. The process is likely to continue and should result in stronger demand for machine operators in plastics than in metal.

Competition from foreign trade usually has a negative impact on employment. Often, foreign manufacturers can produce goods more cheaply than they can be produced in the United States, and the cost savings can be passed on in the form of lower prices with which U.S. manufacturers cannot compete. Increased international competition is a major reason for the decline in employment among textile, apparel, and furnishings workers.

In some cases, the Handbook mentions that an occupation is likely to provide numerous job openings or, in others, that an occupation likely will afford relatively few openings. This information reflects the projected change in employment, as well as replacement needs. Large occupations that have high turnover, such as food and beverage serving occupations, generally provide the most job openings—reflecting the need to replace workers who transfer to other occupations or who stop working.

Some Handbook statements discuss the relationship between the number of jobseekers and the number of job openings. (The phrases used to describe that relationship appear at the end of this section.) In some occupations, there is a rough balance between jobseekers and job openings, resulting in good opportunities. In other occupations, employers may report difficulty finding qualified applicants, resulting in excellent job opportunities. Still other occupations are characterized by a surplus of applicants, leading to keen competition for jobs. On the one hand, limited training facilities, salary regulations, or undesirable aspects of the work—as in the case of private household workers—can result in an insufficient number of entrants to fill all job openings. On the other hand, glamorous or potentially high-paying occupations, such as actors or musicians, generally have surpluses of jobseekers. Variation in job opportunities by industry, educational attainment, size of firm, or geographic location also may be discussed. Even in crowded fields, job openings do exist. Good students or highly qualified individuals should not be deterred from undertaking training for, or seeking entry into, those occupations.