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Romanino, Superintendent paying the workers, 1531-32, fresco, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento, Italy.

A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which is specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... Image File history File links Gnome-globe. ... Castello del Buonconsiglio. ... Trento (Italian: Trento; German: Trient; Latin: Tridentum; Note that many of the regions Italian languages/dialects use Trent or Trènt) is an Italian city located in the Adige River valley in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. ... Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... An employment contract is an agreement entered into between an employer and an employee at the commencement of the period of employment and stating the exact nature of their business relationship, specifically what compensation the employee will receive in exchange for specific work performed. ... A wage is a compensation which workers receive in exchange for their labor. ...

From the point of a view of running a business, salary can also be viewed as the cost of acquiring human resources for running operations, and is then termed personnel expense or salary expense. In accounting, salaries are recorded in payroll accounts. In economics, a business is a legally-recognized organizational entity existing within an economically free country designed to sell goods and/or services to consumers, usually in an effort to generate profit. ... This article is about human resources as it applies to business, labor, and economies. ... Business operations are those activities involved in the running of a business for the purpose of producing value for the stakeholders. ... In accountancy, an account is a label used for recording and reporting a quantity of almost anything. ...

History

First paid salary

While there is no first pay stub for the first work-for-pay exchange, the first salaried work would have required a human society advanced enough to have a barter system to allow work to be exchanged for goods or other work. More significantly, it presupposes the existence of organized employers --perhaps a government or a religious body--that would facilitate work-for-hire exchanges on a regular enough basis to constitute salaried work. From this, most infer that the first salary would have been paid in a village or city during the Neolithic Revolution, sometime between 10,000 BC and 6,000 BC. A pay stub, paystub, payslip, or sometimes paycheck stub is a document that an employee receives either as a notice that the direct deposit transaction has gone through, or as part of their paycheck. ... Barter is a type of trade that do not use any medium of exchange, in which goods or services are exchanged for other goods and/or services. ... Masouleh village, Gilan Province, Iran. ... In anthropology and archaeology, the urban revolution is the process by which small, kin-based, nonliterate agricultural villages are transformed into large, socially complex, civilized urban centres. ... The Neolithic Revolution is the term for the first agricultural revolution, describing the transition from nomadic hunting and gathering communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement, as first adopted by various independent prehistoric human societies, in numerous locations on most continents between 10-12 thousand years ago. ...

Salt as payment

By the time of the Hebrew Book of Ezra (550 BC to 450 BC), accepting salt from a person was synonymous with drawing sustenance, taking pay, or being in that person's service. At that time salt production was strictly controlled by the monarchy or ruling elite. Depending on the translation of Ezra 4:14, the servants of King Artaxerxes I of Persia explain their loyalty variously as "because we are salted with the salt of the palace" or "because we have maintenance from the king" or "because we are responsible to the king." The Book of Ezra is a book of the Bible in the Old Testament and Hebrew Tanakh. ... For other uses, see Monarch (disambiguation). ... Artaxerxes I was king of Persia from 464 BC to 424 BC. He belonged to the Achaemenid dynasty and was the successor of Xerxes I. He is mentioned in two books of the Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah. ... Persia redirects here. ...

The Roman word salarium

Similarly, the Roman word salarium linked employment, salt and soldiers, but the exact link is unclear. The least common theory is that the word soldier itself comes from the Latin sal dare (to give salt). Alternatively, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder stated as an aside in his Natural History's discussion of sea water, that "[I]n Rome. . .the soldier's pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it. . ." Plinius Naturalis Historia XXXI. Others note that soldier more likely derives from the gold solidus, with which soldiers were known to have been paid, and maintain instead that the salarium was either an allowance for the purchase of salt or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the Salt Roads (Via Salarium) that led to Rome. This article is about a military rank. ... Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait. ... Naturalis Historia Pliny the Elders Natural History is an encyclopedia written by Pliny the Elder. ... Julian solidus, ca. ...

Payment in the Roman empire and medieval and pre-industrial Europe

Regardless of the exact connection, the salarium paid to Roman soldiers has defined a form of work-for-hire ever since in the Western world, and gave rise to such expressions as "being worth one's salt." Occident redirects here. ...

Yet within the Roman Empire or (later) medieval and pre-industrial Europe and its merchantile colonies, salaried employment appears to have been relatively rare and mostly limited to government service. More commonly, servitude either received no pay, as with slavery, serfdom, and indentured servitude, or received only fraction of what was produced, as with sharecropping. Other common alternative models of work included self- or co-operative employment, as with artisan guilds, or communal work and ownership, as with medieval universities and monasteries. For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... Industrialisation (or industrialization) or an industrial revolution (in general, with lowercase letters) is a process of social and economic change whereby a human society is transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial state . ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... A painting of a French seaport from 1638, at the height of mercantilism. ... Slave redirects here. ... Serf redirects here. ... An Indentured servant is an unfree labourer under contract to work (for a specified amount of time) for another person, often without any pay, but in exchange for accommodation, food, other essentials and/or free passage to a new country. ... Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga. ... An artisan, also called a craftsman,[1] is a skilled manual worker who uses tools and machinery in a particular craft. ... A guild is an association of craftspeople in a particular trade. ... The first European medieval universities were established in Italy and France in the late 12th and early 13th Century for the study of arts, law, medicine, and theology. ... Monastery of St. ...

Payment during the Commercial Revolution

Even many of the jobs initially created by the Commercial Revolution in the years from 1520 to 1650 and later during Industrialisation in the 1700s and 1800s would not have been salaried, but, to the extent they were paid as employees, probably paid an hourly or daily wage or paid per unit produced (also called piece work). The Commercial Revolution was a period of European economic expansion, colonialism, and mercantilism which lasted from approximately 1520 until 1650. ... A factory in Ilmenau (Germany) around 1860 Industrialisation (also spelt Industrialization) or an Industrial Revolution is a process of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed from a pre-industrial society (an economy where the amount of capital accumulated per capita is low) to an industrial one... A wage is a compensation which workers receive in exchange for their labor. ... Piece work or piecework describes types of employment in which a worker is paid a fixed piece rate for each unit produced or action performed. ...

Share in earnings as payment

In corporations of this time, such as the several East India Companies, many managers would have been remunerated as owner-shareholders. Such a remuneration scheme is still common today in accounting, investment, and law firm partnerships where the leading professionals are equity partners, and do not technically receive a salary, but rather make a periodic "draw" against their share of annual earnings. For other uses, see Corporation (disambiguation). ... East India Company was the name of several historic European companies chartered with the monopoly of trading with Asia for their respective countries. ... A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or company (including a corporation) that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a joint stock company. ... Remuneration is pay or salary, typically monetary compensation for services rendered, as in a employment. ... It has been suggested that Accounting scholarship be merged into this article or section. ... A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. ... A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners share with each other the profits or losses of the business undertaking in which all have invested. ... A profession is an occupation, vocation or career where specialized knowledge of a subject, field, or science is applied. ... At the start of a business, owners put some funding into the business to finance assets. ...

The Second Industrial Revolution and salaried payment

From 1870 to 1930, the Second Industrial Revolution gave rise to the modern business corporation powered by railroads, electricity and the telegraph and telephone. This era saw the widespread emergence of a class of salaried executives and administrators who served the new, large-scale enterprises being created. The Second Industrial Revolution (1865–1900) is a phrase used by some historians to describe an assumed second phase of the Industrial Revolution. ... For other uses, see Corporation (disambiguation). ... The increase in output from Q to Q2 causes a decrease in the average cost of each unit from C to C1. ...

New managerial jobs lent themselves to salaried employment, in part because the effort and output of "office work" were hard to measure hourly or piecewise, and in part because they did not necessarily draw remuneration from share ownership. Managerial economics (also called business economics), is a branch of economics that applies microeconomic analysis to specific business decisions. ... This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... Look up share on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

As Japan rapidly industrialized in the 1900s, the idea of office work was novel enough that a new Japanese word (salaryman), was coined to describe those who performed it, and their remuneration. Salaryman or Salariman ) is a Japanese term for a white-collar worker. ...

Salaried employment in the 20th century

In the 20th century, the rise of the service economy made salaried employment even more common in developed countries, where the relative share of industrial production jobs declined, and the share of executive, administrative, computer, marketing, and creative jobs--all of which tended to be salaried--increased. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. ... World map indicating Human Development Index (as of 2004). ...

Salary and other forms of payment today

Today, the idea of a salary continues to evolve as part of a system of all the combined rewards that employers offer to employees. Salary (also now known as fixed pay) is coming to be seen as part of a "total rewards" system which includes variable pay (such as bonuses, incentive pay, and commissions), benefits and perquisites (or perks), and various other tools which help employers link rewards to an employee's measured performance. Employee benefits (also called fringe benefits, perquisites, or perks) are various non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries. ...

Salaries in the US

In the United States, the distinction between periodic salaries (which could be paid regardless of hours worked) and hourly wages (meeting a minimum wage test and providing for overtime) was first codified by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. At that time, five categories were identified as being "exempt" from minimum wage and overtime protections, and therefore salariable. In 1991, some computer workers were added as a sixth category. The tests for all six categories were revised effective August 23, 2004. The minimum wage is the minimum rate a worker can legally be paid (usually per hour) as opposed to wages that are determined by the forces of supply and demand in a free market. ... Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours; these may be determined in several ways, by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society), by practices of a given trade or profession, by legislation, or by agreement between employers and workers or their representatives. ... The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA, ch. ...

The six categories of salaried workers exempt from overtime provisions are: (1) Executive Employees, who hire, fire and direct others; (2) Administrative Employees, exercising discretion as part of office work; (3) Learned Professional Employees, such as medical practitioners, lawyers,^[1] engineers, dentists, veterinarians, accountants; (4) Creative Professional Employees in an artistic field; (5) Computer Employees, who must meet certain threshold tests; and (6) Outside Sales Employees, who must work away from an employer's place of business. Some of the 2004 exemption tests depend on being paid a weekly salary of greater than $455, even though no hourly minimum wage is required or maximum number of hours worked is established.

Further reading:Income in the United States The percentage of households and individuals in each income bracket. ...

See also

Look up salary in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Executive compensation
• List of single-digit salary earners
• List of largest sports contracts
• List of highest paid baseball players
• List of highest-paid actors
• List of Canadian political offices by salary
• Medical specialties, includes salaries respectively