This post is from staff writer April Dykman.
I had a conversation with a friend, we’ll call him Joel, who had two job offers. One was a low-stress 9-to-5 gig, but paid $10,000 less than the other offer, which would require longer hours and greater responsibility. He didn’t like a lot of things about the higher paying position, but he accepted the offer because it was more in line with the salary at his last job.
In the months that followed, he was regularly putting in 12-hour days at the office and working Sundays. My guess is that it was at least 60 hours per week, but that’s probably being conservative. And his gut instinct was right — he wasn’t enjoying the new job.
I couldn’t help but to wonder if the extra money was worth it because I was in a similar position not long ago.
When I was an employee, I was on the cusp of going from hourly to salary, and quite frankly, I’m glad I was able to avoid the uncomfortable conversation of declining a promotion (probably not a great career move). In my situation, a jump in levels would essentially mean I would be doing the same job (with the possibility of more responsibility) for the same pay. Vacation and sick days were the same for hourly or salaried employees. When I asked what the difference was between the two pay structures, other than the fact that I wouldn’t get paid for overtime on salary, I was told that salaried employees can take a couple of hours for a doctor’s appointment and not have to use their sick time.
As a young, healthy woman without kids, I had amassed more sick days than vacation time. That wasn’t much of an incentive. Then I looked around me at some of the other salaried employees who stayed late or worked weekends, and I wanted no part of it. I wanted to have dinner with my husband at night and spend our weekends going to markets and cooking and watching Netflix movies.
At another job, I was told that being on salary meant that “if we close the office early, you’ll still get paid.” But we closed the office maybe two or three afternoons out of the year, and there were many, many events that required 8+ hour days. Once I put in a 22-hour day for a particularly big event.
In these particular situations, I just didn’t see the benefit of switching to salary. Was I crazy, or was everyone else?!
Exempt and non-exempt
First, let’s look at what exactly it means to be hourly or salaried. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which governs most jobs, employees are either “exempt” or “nonexempt.” Nonexempt employees are typically paid by the hour and are entitled to overtime pay it they work more than 40 hours per week. Exempt employees, on the other hand, do not get overtime pay. For example, a sales consultant is usually exempt, but a customer service rep who works in a call center will most likely be nonexempt.
Every field, company, and job is different, but generally, the following are the benefits and drawbacks of each pay structure.
Hourly wage
The benefits to being paid by the hour include the following:
- Guaranteed a certain dollar amount for every hour you work.
- Positions usually have a predetermined number of hours you’ll work.
- If you’re asked to work more than 40 hours, you get paid overtime, which is time-and-a-half for each hour after the first 40 hours. For example, if your hourly wage is $12, you would be paid $18 for every hour past 40 hours in a week.
- Some employers double your hourly rate if you’re asked to work holidays.
The drawbacks? If your place of business closes early or decides to cut back on hours, that means a smaller paycheck. The likelihood of that happening depends on the industry and the company. A 9-to-5 office job is likely to have a set schedule, whereas a job working in retail might fluctuate more.
Salary pay
The benefits to being paid a set salary include the following:
- Guaranteed a certain dollar amount per paycheck.
- Some companies offer salaried employees additional perks, such as vacation days or a more flexible schedule. For example, if you finish your work early, you might be able to take the afternoon off.
- Often salaried positions come with a higher status and/or a jump on the pay scale.
- Salaried employees might be happier, according to a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Researchers found that income didn’t affect happiness levels as much for salaried employees as for those paid hourly, who experienced a stronger relationship between income and happiness.
The downside is that if a salaried position demands more than 40 hours per week and working on holidays, you won’t get paid extra for your time.
In my case, there were no extra perks and no bump in pay. My hours were just as set as they were for salaried coworkers, maybe more so since my boss was reluctant to have me work overtime and have to pay time-and-a-half. I think in Joel’s case, it wasn’t such a good deal, either. If he was making $50,000 and working 60 hours per week, he made about $16 per hour. If he had accepted the other job offer at $40,000 and 40 hours per week, he would have make $19.24 per hour. He was working at a lower hourly wage, and he wasn’t even enjoying his job.
But in many cases, it can be a great thing, especially if you make more money, get extra benefits, and your company doesn’t expect 80-hour work weeks with no time off to compensate. If you’re given the choice between the two, whether at your company or when negotiating job offers, look at the whole package. Find out the average number of hours the job requires, calculate your hourly wage, and think about what your time is worth. (Even better: Compute your real hourly wage, since it’ll reflect hidden job costs, such as wardrobe and commuting.) If you’re young and single, maybe you want to focus on your career and climb the corporate ladder. If you’re a father of two small kids, making it home for dinner every night might be your top priority. Then look at the perks and decide if they’re worthwhile to you. For example, a free pass for doctor appointments didn’t matter to me in the least, but I would’ve jumped at the chance for a flexible schedule.
In short, don’t assume that salary pay is necessarily better. Every job and every employee’s personal situation is different, so crunch the numbers and weigh the benefits for yourself.
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I say it all depends on what’s expected out of you as a salaried employee. Currently, I’m salaried, but there is no expectation for me to work more than 40 hours per week. In fact, my time is more relaxed because I don’t have to make up time if I miss an hour of work for a doctor’s appointment.
For many though, a salaried position means long hours and little appreciation. If this is the case for your company, I would advise sticking out the hourly position as long as possible (unless of course, there is a possibility of advancing further in the company).
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I think this response states it well. If a position means long hours and little appreciation, salaried may not be the way to go. Sometimes, the same work can be done with higher ROI if done independently as a consultant/contractor.
Again, it depends on the profession, your career goals, and each specific situation. But I think it’s important to always keep in mind one’s overall quality of life and true hourly pay – even if salaried.
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I have been in both situations and from what I have experienced, I prefer salary. However, like LAMF said, salary only works if you only expected to work your 40 hours. I have been in spots where overtime was a must but at that point I decided to make a change. I like the fact of not having to punch in for every hour of work that I do- the flexibility is great .
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Everyone seems to have positive salary experiences, but I’m a little frustrated with mine. I have decent insurance, but if I take off a couple hours early to pick someone up from the airport, I’m expected to use vacation time. Considering the fact that I only get 10 days’ worth vacation time per year, I’d rather not use it for little things like that. I also am expected to work 48 hours a week, every single week, with at least 40 of them being client-billable. If I have 39 client-billable hours, I didn’t meet my requirement for the week, and it’s a bad mark in my associate profile. That hurts chances for raises and promotions.
Basically, my company pays us salary so they don’t have to pay us overtime, but they don’t allow us any of the perks that go along with being salaried. Make sure you discuss how the company treats the salaried job with current employees. I wish I had taken a different position; then I wouldn’t be working a minimum of 9.6 hours/day.
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I requested to go salary instead of hourly (stupidly I must admit) thinking I would be able to use my few hours as comp time for doctors appt etc. Well .. the attorneys who are salaried have the perks of coming and going as they please but I was told I (as a professional also) would not be able to use my time as comp time. what I was told was there is actually no difference for me except I was now working extra hours without pay. can you guess what I have done? I quit putting in so much time on weekends and evenings (actually putting in ZERO time)
Why would I do this? I thought since I was the only nurse in the office and was also duel degreed I would be considered a professional and have those same perks. NOPE.. I can not even come in late. I must sign in and work my designated hours. I can not use my few hours from the weekend as comp time and use it for appts etc. NO BENEFIT to me at all. I would advise anyone going into a salaried position to ask lots of questions as to what this means…
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I don’t think you adequately stated the benefit of a salaried position in terms of the impact on lifetime earning potential. In most cases, salaried positions are coveted for a reason: they are usually linked to higher responsibilities and higher career potential. Management is salaried while lower-level staff is hourly. You did mention it a bit, but not enough. There is a strict limit to earnings potential for hourly employees while salaried ones can progress much further based on their talent, effort and performance. In the example, you say its a benefit that your boss is more likely to give more work to the salaried employee – that provides better resume-building, job security, and visibility in the firm. All good things. But you’re right – you may not have to stay as late.
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In general it seems like salary postitions are careers, whereas hourly positions are just jobs.
While each have their respective advantages and disadvantages I am starting a very good salary job in 6 days and cannot wait, and yes it’s one of the 60+ hour a week type salary job, maybe more. I have been hourly for the last 2 years now and am sick of it.
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There is so much more to a salaried position than whether or not you make overtime. As someone else commented, “Salaried positions are careers; hourly positions are jobs.”
The question isn’t how much do you make per hour. The question is, do you want a job or a career?
Some people only want a job. That’s fine; plenty of room for that. But an hourly position isn’t better for you in the long term just because you have the potential for overtime pay.
I haven’t held an hourly job since college. In my field, the idea of someone with an hourly position having any kind of upward mobility is laughable.
Yes, I work overtime. Without additional pay. My salary includes an allowance for the expected overtime hours, and my hours vary from 40 to 70 a week depending on what’s going on. As management, my job is not to watch the clock, it’s to get things done.
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Just wondering if Emily, you have children, and if so the ages. I have a 2 and 6 year old, a salary job, I agree with you about salaried jobs often being “careers”. But I cannot imagine if my job required 40-70 hours a week. (unless the high end was EXTREMELY rare.) That would destroy my grip on homelife. (Not criticizing you, just wondering if you DO have children, how you make that work.) Haha, and I say “my grip on homelife” as if I actually have that.
It is tentative even with a 35-45 hour a week salaried job.
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Our company Assistant Controller and HR never work over 30 hours. They said if they work over 35+ hours that mean there salary is not paying enough.
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It really depends on the career field and the amount of salaried positions available at your company. I’ve been in two different hourly positions where I excelled at my job and although there were no higher positions to be promoted to (unless someone left and no one was leaving) so I was given a few more responsibilities and a merit raise because of my job performance. It’s not true that if you are hourly you are locked down – I’ve had 2 different experiences with adjusting responsibilities and hourly rate up without being moved into a salaried position.
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This article is unrealistic and out of tune with the times. Most people don’t have the luxury of choosing between multiple job offers, let alone a full time job with benefits.
I’ve spent 3 years looking for full time employment. I am barely surviving on sporadic temp work, no benefits, hourly wages, with minor bonuses for performance. Now the performance bonuses have been eliminated, and the job has switched to “piecework.” I get paid 50 cents for each piece of paperwork I process. I used to get $11.75 an hour. Now with piecework, I’m guaranteed only $10/hour minimum, I have to work harder than ever to earn the same wages I did before. And now I feel like if I take a bathroom break, I just lost a dollar of wages.
Perhaps you could address the realities of the modern workplace as the masses experience it. Perhaps you could focus on how workers can maximize unemployment insurance benefits, food stamps, and state funded medicare health insurance, and how employers deliberately structure their jobs to avoid paying “permatemps” honest wages so they have to live off government supported programs for the poor.
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There is something really wrong with our economy today. Unemployment is rampant yet companies are making record-breaking profits. Employees turn into desk slaves while the “boss” has champagne parties in his posh suburban home or takes the week off to hang out at the lake. The working man needs to take back some of this power. I’m not sure exactly how to do this yet, but I am trying to make myself irreplaceable at work. Once I get them where I want them, I’m going to ask for a raise and for remote access. It’s time for a new economy, my friends.
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I think your talking about a union.
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The posh parties happen more in the private sector than in Union companies. The rich are getting richer and the middle class is getting squezzed out!
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Having worked in both union and non union environments. There are unions in both the public and private sector. Union and company leadership are both capable of questionable spending.
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It’s called productivity. Companies laid off people during the recession and were often able to sustain levels of output: productivity went up. Why hire more people just because you’re making more money? Companies aren’t required to hire lots of people just because they operating in America…
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I’d argue that’s a gross oversimplification.
During the recession, companies downsized their workforces and those who were fortunate enough to keep their jobs were forced to work longer, more demanding hours, unpaid overtime and many folk live in a state of constant panic that their job will disappear if they complain about this, that they’ll be the next person to disappear into the unemployment black hole.
Yes, productivity went up – because harried staff worked their behinds off and were/are taken advantage of every day.
I’d argue that this isn’t sustainable and if firms continue to pay people less for longer hours and more work, something’s got to give.
*That’s* why more hiring is needed.
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If you become irreplaceable, than your manager is not doing their job. One of the manager’s most important jobs is to cross train employees, so that company doesn’t get in a situation, which you are hoping for.
To me this is almost selfish. In your case, what would happen with the business if you get sick, take some time off or decide to leave company? If the answer is “I don’t care”, you doing it wrong. You should do your best for the business at all time and that’s how you will achieve your job security. The rest will come….
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Piece work stinks!
I worked in a factory while I was in college and we worked in teams. My partner was on piecework while I was hourly. I had to process all the parts my piecework partner produced every shift. So my partner would work 8 hours straight, no breaks, to get as many pieces made as he could, and I had to bust my tail to keep up…even though I wasn’t getting paid for working that way. It’s great to wolf down your sandwich and go to the bathroom then dash back to work to find a stack of parts waiting for you…it was very stressful, I was behind and playing catch-up all the time.
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Charles, keep in mind that even if unemployment is 9%, that means that roughly 91% of the population is employed.
The fact that April’s article is targeted towards those who have a job hardly means that it’s “out of touch with the times.”
If you’d like a better job, by all means, go get one! I was laid off at the height of the recession, sent out 250 resumes, and had a job offer within 2 weeks. It can be done if you’re willing to work for it.
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Does anyone else get tired of the gung-ho attitude of people who say ‘I lost a job and got another one instantly, so you can too!’?
I have numberous family members who are unemployed (in the UK) and have dilligently sent off dozens of applications *a week* for *months* (6 months in one case, over a year in the other).
The applications are well written, they have skills and they’re willing to do pretty much anything within reason, but they’re not getting jobs.
Sometimes it’s not as easy as ‘just get a job’…
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I can see how it’s annoying to be told to go out and get another job, but really, what’s the alternative? I find it much more exasperating to hear people gripe about their situation without taking any positive action.
As J.D. might say, no one cares more about your situation than you. If you want to improve it, it’s up to you.
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It really depends on where you are and what field you are in. Two groups of people are hit especially hard in this recession: more experienced employees (20+ years) and men. The reason? They were paid more so employers see them as more expensive to hire. But if you’re willing to take too drastic of a hit to your former salary, employers are wary because they wonder why and are nervous the employee will be out looking for a higher paid job, using the current job as a layover until they can get back to the higher salary. And if you’re unemployed for more than a month or so, it becomes extremely difficult to find a job because there’s a wariness of wondering why this person hasn’t found a job yet.
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I agree with your overall sentiment. However, the actual unemployment rate is much higher. The feds don’t include those who have stopped looking for work or have been unable to find work after exhausting benefits. The actual unemployment number could be significantly as high as 30 to 40%, although that is my personal opinion based upon how the unemployment rate is calculated.
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In my experience, salaried positions generally provide additional compensation such as bonuses and stock options that hourly positions don’t. In addition, most management tracks involve salaried positions, so often there are special training programs to help develop talent. My boss was invited to participate in a special MBA program for employees at a certain pay grade–it was specifically set up around our work schedules.
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You’re right about management track – sometimes it looks like the first few levels of “salaried” are just hazing for the real jobs – “look how many hours she worked, for the same rate of pay!”
But I have had lots of hourly jobs, with bonuses & profit-sharing, where I made as much per hour as my salaried managers and supervisors…the real money was still 2 or 3 levels above them, and they were working 60 hours a week.
I don’t know any salaried people who only put in 40 hours/week and, truthfully, it looks like a bad deal most of the time. I’d rather have a life than an extra $10-$20K.
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In my first job out of grad school, I was generously offered a move from hourly to salaried when I got pregnant with my daughter so that my health insurance would be paid by the company instead of myself. There were also retirement benefits, maternity leave, disability leave, and bonuses that were then avalale to me that weren’t available when I was hourly. Those benefits outweighed the extra money I had the potential of earning as an hourly employee.
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To be honest, I have never seen the benefits of being salaried FT when there is an hourly equivalent. I worked shifts and weekends at my old job, but I was union and hourly, so at least i was well compensated for it.
At my current company, all employees are salaried. I expect there will be overtime (more than flexibility for things like doctor’s appointments will make up for) but it’s work that by and large I am happy to do within reasons (and the good thing is I can work from almost anywhere if need be.)
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I tried poking around the Internet to find out to what extent hourly positions are common outside of retail, manufacturing, trades and nursing, but unfortunately didn’t find much, minus a reference to hourly wages usually being associated with blue collar jobs.
How common is it to be able to choose between hourly and salaried? The only instance I can think of in any of the above industries is between worker bee and management.
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Government jobs are hourly.
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Many government jobs are salary. It depends on the job.
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Mine certainly isn’t!
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My government job is technically hourly, in that all of us (managers too) have to log our hours, and technically there’s an hourly wage listed on our pay stubs, but we will never receive overtime and our checks will always be for exactly the same amount every pay – even the job offer letter phrased it as “$XXX biweekly” instead of “$XX.XX hourly for XX hours per day/week/pay period.”
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The record keeping in the public sector (government) is about accountability. Having worked in public and private sector in management positions, I did record and submit hours in the Sr. Mgmt government position I was in. That did not make the job hourly by classification. It is a record keeping requirement for government. I was not paid overtime.
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Kate,
I worked in a hospital and I was salary while my coworkers (a program director and a social worker) were hourly. They worked around the same hours as me, but while I was told to stay late and finish stuff sometimes, they HAD to go home if the hospital didn’t want to pay them anymore.
A lot of nurses are also hourly and others in hospitality fields.
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For me, it’s been the choice between part time vs. full time in very similar jobs, and between taking or not taking promotions when I was already working full time.
In a lot of companies, the shift from “team lead” (hourly) to “supervisor” (salary) is just a title change and less money, with the carrot of eventual promotion dangled to get people to put in ridiculous hours and on-call time for years at a time. If you choose the company well, it pans out over time…assuming your future self wants the corporate job your past self chose to sacrifice for. Which isn’t always true.
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Many professional fields, like law, now offer hourly options. The drawback is no participation if the firm has a health insurance option, no vacation/ sick days, and no 401k if it is offered. The upsides are if I want to leave early to take my infant to the park, I leave. Of course I don’t get paid for that time, but I make up my work on my own time b/c I’m still a professional and that’s what’s expected. No overtime either, but if I have a busy week I get paid for the total amount of hours worked, whereas if I were salary I would hope the firm would be generous at the end of the year with my bonus but that rarely is the case anymore. A lot of professional fields are hiring by the hour now because they’re uncertain of future staffing needs. Others, such as myself, are switching to it b/c of the flexibility. It depends on your priorities. I know other lawyers, doctors, and accountants all doing the same. So it’s not just clerical vs. management, it’s becoming more widespread in this economy.
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I work for a large legal research firm offering both hourly and salaried positions. While the salaried positions tend to be the higher career-oriented positions, the firm still offers health insurance, 401k with company match, sick days and vacation to hourly workers. I’d like to move into a salaried position eventually, but I have no problems working an hourly position in the meantime. I think the benefits offered depend more on the company/firm you’re working for than whether you’re hourly or salaried.
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This comes up frequently in the software industry, but it’s usually framed as “contractor vs. employee” (where contractor could be consultant, temp, etc.) Usually a contractor gets paid more per hour, but doesn’t get benefits, stock options, etc.
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I’m guessing it varies a lot by job. My husband worked for an hourly wage for his first few years as an architect. He regularly worked 60-80 hours per week and sometimes over 100 (it’s a cult, I swear). There was a lot of pressure to work like this as well as internal motivation, since all that overtime more than doubled his paycheck.
Moving to a salaried position meant he got paid about the same per paycheck or a little less (the base rate was much higher) and was able to start saying no to unreasonable requests. He still worked 60 hours but those 80-100 hour weeks dwindled without the financial motivation.
For me, I love being in a salaried position. I had an hourly position a few years back that paid much more than what I currently make, and I found it so stressful, trying to figure out if I had come in late, or stayed late, or took a day off, how much would my paycheck be. It made me think about money way too much. Knowing exactly what’s coming in lets me relax and not worry about it.
In both of our professions, though, hourly jobs are only for entry-level workers or people with lower-level qualifications (in my job, if you have a bachelor’s you’re hourly, master’s is salaried). So there’s not a real choice to be made.
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Ha ha ha! It is a cult, isn’t it? I’ve known my husband to work 36 hours straight when getting ready for a big deadline. I’ve done such things too in my nonprofit career but not nearly as often.
I think they brainwash everyone in architecture school to believe if they work insane hours they just might be the next Frank Lloyd Wright.
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This article only talks about the difference in pay, not the difference between hourly work and a salaried position. If you’re hired for a specific project or responsibility, it doesn’t make sense to schedule a precise number of hours. Hourly pay makes sense for a lot of jobs, from low paying jobs like retail, to high paying jobs like plumbing and consulting. But I think the situation April described where the same job gives you a choice between hourly and salaried is out of the norm. Usually the nature of the work makes one choice more logical.
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I’m currently in a salaried, flex-time position. It’s horrible. Contrary to the job description on hiring, I am expected to be available 24/7 for whomever needs me, with very little notice. For the record, I’m a paralegal, and there’s really no ‘ladder’ for me to climb, so no incentive to kill myself for ‘Chinese overtime’ (the more you work, the less you make per hour – by the 60th hour, you could be down to $5/hour). I understand why the attorneys work long hours – it’s for their future, and the legal assistants make time and a half, but my employers don’t seem to understand why we (the paralegals) might not be ok with the situation. I’ve finally gone back to school, with or without their approval, in a desperate bid to get out of here. Hopefully I won’t lose my job because of it…
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I’m hourly part-time flex right now, and the folks I report to keep saying “They should make you full time!” like it’s a reward. If I wanted full time, I’d be full time. There are only about 10 part-time flex positions in the whole company, and every time one opens up internally there are a ton of applications.
Unlike hourly part-time I’ve done before, this job has no insurance benefits. The company has no reason NOT to offer the option for other jobs – they’d save a ton of money, from folks not working when there’s not work to do and having people to cover busy times without going into overtime. I’m certainly getting as much work done as in my previous position, where work came in bursts but we were required to clock 40+ hours/week. But the corporate culture is that everyone should aspire to 40-60 hours/week of paid work.
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Jen,
You should research salaried employees, specifically exempt vs non-exempt. If sometimes you are seriously down to $5 an hour, that is illegal, you must be paid At Least minimum wage regardless of salaried or not. Also, salaried exempt employees must meet certain standards, such as having direct supervision over other employees. Do you supervise others? You may be non-exempt, which means you are entitled over time for any time worked over 40 (even salaried). My boyfriend went thru this recently. He was salaried, yet at a low salary somewhere in the $30000′s. To me salaried employees, are white collar upper management making upwards of $80,0000, so I thought it was strange he was salaried (esp, since he was required to work OT, every week). I started doing research, he started asking questions to HR, and a few months later, he is now hourly, after getting back paid for two years worth of OT. He’s using that money to go back to school : )
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Finally, someone who knows something about this! It is illegal to put an employee on salary to avoid paying overtime, exempt positions not withstanding, and it seems that this is done regularly. Not only must an employee supervise at least two full-time employees to be exempt, but the salaried employee must also make decisions that are substantive to the direction of the corporation. They must also earn a minimum amount (just over $27,000 the last time I looked). There are one or two smaller criteria, too, but I don’t remember what they are.
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I no longer work outside the home, so my experience may not be yours.
I always worked hourly and preferred it! I was a low to mid grade technician for most of my career, but had other skills so I was a valued employee and generally well compensated. My benefits were good, but to me the most valuable benefits were intangible. When my shift was over, I clocked out and was done for the day. If I had to work later, I was paid for my extra work. If through extenuating circumstances I had to work on weekends or holidays (it sometimes happened) I made a small fortune in overtime pay. I never had to spend a fortune on clothes.
I almost never experienced micromanaging and the ‘suits’ were usually too caught up their own drama, so I could cruise below the radar.
I’ll take hourly over salary any day!
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This article is missing some major points. Typically you do NOT get to choose between exempt and nonexempt status. The Fair Labor Standards Act sets some tests to determine IF an employee can be exempt. Basing it on a “salaries test” and a “duties test”.
Do a little research next time.
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I agree. I’ve been salaried my entire career – but not always exempt from overtime. It’s the best of both worlds – I was guaranteed a ‘base’ but, did get paid for overtime. Of course, once I started managing other employees, writing policy and budgets, then I was exempt and lost the overtime benefit!
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Correct on FLSA, but the article is discussing choosing between two different job offers, one which is hourly and the other which is salary, or two different positions within a company, one paid hourly and the other salary.
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If they are comparable jobs, I’m very surprised that one is hourly and one is salaried. As the PP noted, the positions would have to be put to the same tests. If they are truly different jobs altogether, then it seems like it’s really more a question of whether you want more responsibility, and are willing to work more than 40 hours per week.
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Another downside to hourly is that usually there is a salary cap. In places I’ve worked, many hourly workers are a lower level position in terms of career band, so they often max out on their salary band long before they hit retirement age, so they’ll get a lump sum, but not an actual raise come review time.
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While I doubt I will ever get to choose between salary and hourly (unless I open my own company), I did recently make a choice between a cushy job that let me work from home with regular Caribbean travel and a job paying roughly 40% more but was in an office, no travel and meant significant overtime during busy periods.
There were a few more issues at stake such as advancement (in the old job I would have plateaued for probably 10 years before significant promotions were available-but it was a “dream job” in most people’s eyes), whereas the new higher paying job had opportunity galore.
In the end I am okay with the switch, the increased money lets me travel to the islands NOT on a work trip and I’m excited to climb the ladder again. I don’t think about extra hours that much as long as you enjoy and are challenged by what you do. If you’re working with friends at something challenging and rewarding, then working 60 hour weeks isn’t so bad at all!
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I’ll second that being salaried helps in future careers. When I went to salaried at age 25 I actually made less than hourly due to the overtime I had earned previously. But when I moved across the country the new company was impressed that I had been on salary at such a young age, it helped get a new job.
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The big difference between salaried and hourly is the protections that a salaried position offers you. If you are an hourly employee, the company can fire you at any time if they believe they are not getting the amount of work out of you, which leaves you without unemployment since it is very easy for the company to say you didn’t do your job.
As for salaried employees, they mostly get laid off because in order to fire a salaried employee the company has to document what you did wrong and show negligence even after an “improvement plan” had been put into place. This makes it much easier for out of work salaried employees to get unemployment since they were let go through no fault of their own.
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Except for those of us in a right-to-work state.
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Mark, I don’t think federal law defines different rules for firing people for hourly vs. salary. There may be state laws or company policies along those lines. Hourly employees may get fired more often with less cause but thats just cause some employers do what they can get away with. I don’t think its really any easier or harder to fire one over the other. Its just as easy to claim a salaried person didn’t do their job as an hourly one.
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This depends heavily on state law (and national law, outside the US). Many states have “at will” employment, which means they don’t have to give any reason whatsoever for terminating your employment. Many states pay unemployment even if you were terminated for performance. Perhaps the biggest nugget of truth in your comment was that hourly employees are more likely to be the first ones laid off. However, even that is just a probability, not a guarantee.
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Sorry, Mark, but this is dead wrong. I worked in human resources and both salaried/hourly have the same standards for collecting unemployment because of firing/layoff.
And you certainly don’t necessarily have more job security because you’re salaried. That would vary company by company. Sometimes middle management is the first to be booted.
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I was in a salaried position because I had a professional license (company policy) and did the same job as a non-licensed coworker who was hourly. We worked 50+ hours so I made a LOT less than he did. “Nothing could be done” because it was policy. Also, I never made the same amount if I worked less than 40 hours a week. If I worked 38 (if I went to an appt and didn’t take sick or vacation time) my pay was docked by my calculated hourly wage, based on 40 hours, of course. I never saw any benefit whatsoever to hourly pay in my field. It sure sounded good at one time though!
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My husband’s job is like that. He’s treated as a salaried employee when he works late and on weekends, but as an hourly employee when he needs to take time off.
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I guess I am in an abnormal “salaried” position. The only real difference for me between salaried and hourly at my job is that I don’t have to clock in and if I’m 5-10 minutes late or stay 15 minutes over, it doesn’t affect my pay. I work 7 days on 7 days off 2nd shift in a hospital. My schedule is not flexible at all. I am relieving someone at the beginning of my shift and am relieved by someone at the end. I have never been asked to stay over after my shift ends though I do sometimes. If they need extra help on my off week, I am paid a PRN work rate thats not time and a half, but is still a little better than what I normally make. I would have a huge problem with a job that asked me to work 60+ hours a week beyond my normal schedule without any compensation. I guess thats why I stayed out of the business world!
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I think it does vary widely as to the benefits of being in either position. I have done both. For me, my salaried position (in healthcare field) gave me a large bonus (depending on the company’s profits) but I worked until 8:30 pm everyday. The schedule was not flexible at all. As a current hourly retail worker, I get a tiny bonus (again, depending on profits) but have a very flexible schedule. I also make 50% LESS than my former job. Honestly, I have kids who need my attention so I’ll take the hourly position. As time goes on, I hope to get back to the former job since the pay was so much better.
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I’m salaried, and the core benefits (vacation accrual, retirement, insurance, etc) are the same as hourly but my salaried job allows me a) flex time – I have core hours from 9:30-3:30 and can work any schedule that covers those hours; b) credit hours – can accrue and hold up to 40 hours of overtime to be used at my discretion like vacation or sick leave; c) telecommuting one day a week. None of those things would be options to me if I was an hourly worker.
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That sounds heavenly. What field are you in, if I may ask?
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I work in intellectual property management for a major government contractor (science-y; I have a Ph.D., not a J.D.)
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Are you sure the sales consultant would be exempt? Seems to me that would be true only if they are an outside sales person.
Many companies get the exempt employee thing wrong. I even worked for an employee benefits firm that did. (Then they tried to say we had professional degrees, when I was the only one in my department with more than a high school diploma. Yeah, right.)
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I’ve been in the same boat, where a small business I worked for classified everyone as exempt without any regard for their actual job duties. They were very sketchy about it. We were told to always put 40 hours on our timesheet, no matter how many hours we worked. They claimed it was “company culture” not to work over 40 hours. When we inevitably *had* to work over 40 hours to do an event, they would not pay overtime – we could choose to take an afternoon off the following week.
The DoL has a whole website dedicated to cases like this to help employees get fair pay: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/
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REtail/service employees who get at least 50% of their pay from commissions and make at least 150% of minimum wage can also be salaried.
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I just made the move to a salaried position. Only time will tell if it was the right move. Not that I had much of an option with a recent promotion I was determined to be “exempt.”
I was moved into a salary position with compensation. After a period I lost certain bonuses that were available in an hourly position but again was compensated. I could have technically made more in a year in my old position, but now I no longer worry about peaks and valleys when it comes to my income. I won’t miss the valleys but those peaks would still be nice…
The move wasn’t just about my potential earning for the coming year but my potential earning in coming years. This was a better career move for myself and my family.
There are expecations and responsibilites with this new position that my old one was lacking. Some nights I am required to stay later and there are rare instances that require I spend a few hours here on a day off. But in the grand scheme of things I am working less hours than previously and my pay is for more consistent. Which makes planning our budget easier when considering my income.
It may turn out to be a bust. But for the time being I believe it was a positive move.
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I had the interesting experience of working the same job at the same company as both a salaried and an hourly worker. The pay was roughly the same, since overtime was discouraged unless there was an emergency, but the way I thought about work was much different when I worked hourly than when I worked salaried.
First, some background: the job was a customer-facing, technical support IT job that required shift work. These shifts would change depending on when the customer was scheduled to use our resources.
When I was salaried for the first 9 years of this job, the shifts were either five 8-hour days, from 7:00-16:00, 15:00-midnight, or 23:00-8:00, or shifting schedule where we would work three 12-hour days one week and four the next week (with some exceptions during the busy parts of the year)
I earned almost exactly the same amount hourly as I did salaried, and the benefits were the same as well.
When I was salaried, the management did a good job of regulating our hours for the most part. If we worked 50 or 60 hours one week, we’d get days off later to compensate (though it was never called comp-time) I suspect that in the end, the company came out a little ahead on the hours, getting about 42 hours a week from us, but we were ok with that.
When we worked hourly, management worked very hard to make it so that we were not eligible for overtime. In one sense, this was nice since your schedule was a little more predictable. On the other hand, we lost that wonderful 12-hour schedule and those perpetual three- and four-day weekends!
When I was salaried, I had the flexibility of being able to stay late to finish a project rather than having to interrupt my momentum and go home at a certain time. When we were hourly, you had to leave at the end of your shift so you wouldn’t accumulate overtime. This was more annoying than I thought it would be since I didn’t like to interrupt my momentum and train of thought when in the middle of a small project.
I watched the clock a lot more when I was hourly than when I was salaried, probably to the detriment of the company. The result was that a lot of projects would not get started in the late afternoon, because I wouldn’t have time to really get going on them before I had to leave.
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David,
I think you are the first one to mention the postive aspects of being able to work extra hours, regardless of no extra pay, in order to get things done. In my company, OT is only allowed under extreme circumstances for non-exempt employees. This can create stress when workers just cannot get everything done during the work day. I consider it somewhat of a luxury to be able to stay late or take work home if I need to do so in order to stay on top of things!
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To me, it’s the flexibility – if you have the option of workign more when there’s more work, and less when there’s less, it’s a good thing. But that seems really rare – most workplaces seem to be “at least 40 hours” so you don’t balance the times when you have a lot to do with times when you don’t have to be there.
Me, I run my own schedule, so if I am in the middle of something (and parenting doesn’t interfere) I can work extra hours that day. But the number of hours my employer budgets per week is set, so I just work less on other days that week.
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I’m hourly and the overtime is awesome. However, all of us at the office work 50+ hours per week, so me being hourly or salary wouldn’t affect that as much. The biggest downside to being hourly is the use of my gym pass. I’m grateful that my company pays for my gym pass in our building; however, if any of the salaried employees use the gym during lunch, their pay isn’t directly affected. If I go to the gym for an hour on two separate days, I’ve already lost more in my hourly pay than the gym costs per month.
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While an hourly vs salary discussion is helpful for those just entering the workforce, I think it is poor advice to recommend basing this decision on pay.
The nebulous factor is job satisfaction. Some of my friends have highly undesirable 1 hour commutes in awful traffic to work, but the work makes it worth it. Computing their hourly pay, after the commute and easily 10-12 hr days, comes out to be far less than the production line workers in their facilities, who are compensated hourly.
From my experience, salaried positions have higher responsibilities than hourly positions. Supposedly higher compensation & flexibility goes with the territory.
It depends on your mindset when you get your first job. I see people having huge difficulties going from hourly to salaried because of the mentality “I’m not getting paid for this overtime”. But in this economy, where salaried workers are taking hourly positions to make ends meet, they tend to find hourly jobs very restrictive.
For example, as a homeowner, there are multitudes of things that go wrong with the house, require contractors working on it. Being salaried, I can run out, manage the contractors & come back in. If I don’t make it back in that’s ok – I still get paid. I can get myself caught up the next day, or even come at 10p, after typical business hours.
Our production workers are forced to take a vacation day, or get a few hours less of pay, if they have to run out for such an errand. They do not have the option of making it up at 10pm, since their job requires everyone to be there from 7a – 4p. Their job is reliant of everyone working together, whereas mine is more independent, and there are many things I can get done on my own.
This includes things like running out to the gym, taking a class, etc. The flexibility adds up to a lot more than just pure money. I can advance my career with more education, and not worry about the financial aspect of taking time out of my work day. I can better maintain my health, manage the stress of life by running out for a bit as needed.
Totally different mindset. I get that it’s not for everyone.
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A friend is in contracting with the government. He works hourly and makes close to six figures. He gets no overtime, sick leave or vacation. He does have comprehensive health care and a great 401K. He can leave or be fired with a 24 hour notice. Still, he is very happy with the position.
I think the working world is changing quickly.
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I am in the same position as the author. I am one of two non-union management employees who is non-exempt at my job. I do the same work as the exempt managers, but I get paid for my overtime. As I have been working 50 hour weeks I have been pulling some nice overtime checks.
Now I would like to get a “promotion” to an exempt position because it represents a little more status and opportunity, but unless I received a 25% bump in pay when I loose my overtime I may loose money. As other benefits are the same I don’t see this happening.
This is the second time this happened to me. In my first job out of college I went from “part time” 40+ hours to full time 40+ hours in the same position, but had to take a hourly pay cut to do it. It represented job security, but I was getting paid less then the people I supervised.
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My husband was salaried for a major American clothing company. A whopping $32k a year for 60+ hours of work. It was the last straw when buyers from Hong Kong were calling our house at 11pm.
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I had a job where I was paid based on time worked and I loved it. It seemed really fair (to someone who had always been salary) to be paid for the time you put in and not paid for what you didn’t put in. Honestly I’d probably go for an hourly job over a salaried any day all other things being equal.
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Good article.
Personally I think that hourly is usually the way to go. Too many salary positions have no significant benefits and demand too many hours. But of course it all depends on the job in question.
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One example of how a salaried job may not be ideal was a recent part-time job I applied for at an advertising agency.
They wanted a part-time person on a salary (scaled down for part-time hours), but upon further discussion, it was revealed that I would be at their beck and call, and might even have to come in on my days off.
I have worked in advertising before and I know people stay into the wee hours of the night to get campaigns finished. That’s just the way it is. I was full-time then and I understood that.
Even as a part-time employee, I would be expected to stay until my job (proofreading, which is done last) was completed. Basically, they wanted to pay part-time wages for what could be a full-time job during busy times. I declined. It wasn’t what I was looking for at that point my life.
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I have worked as both salaried as well as hourly wage employee in past. If you are comfortable with a job and have been doing since years, then you become a sort of indispensible, adding to your job security, at that time you can consider going hourly way.
Also if you are into two jobs or depend on part time work, it makes a case for going hourly.
If money is not that important factor as power and fame to you, going salary way is best option.
I have mentioned in my blog post as to how I negotiated for salary increases in past. Link is below.
http://onecentatatime.com/convince-your-boss-to-pay-more/
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If you care about overtime at all or actually pay attention to when you are working more than 40 hrs a week, you either a) have kids or b) have a job, but not a career.
If you care about really building your income, you should work to find a career – and be salaried.
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Which is a ridiculous situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.
My partner has a career he loves. He could care less about the money (seriously, he used to forget to cash bonus checks and they would expire and the company would cut new ones and badger him until he cashed them.) But he loves his work, and he just accepts that it means working 50+ hours/week all the time.
I was on a career track for a few years. I worked a ton of hours, I gave up a lot of outside interests.
Then we had a kid. It’s just not feasible for us to both have “careers” that total up to 110+ hours of work every week between us. So, since I cared less about my career, I went back to having a job. As long as companies make such ridiculous demands on their best workers, most of us will eventually make that choice.
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There is no reason single and/or career minded people shouldn’t care about overtime or working >40hrs. We shouldn’t all expect to work a zillion hours for free just to get ahead in our careers. If “career” by definition means working long hours without extra compensation then I’ll be happy having just a “job” that has better hours.
I’ve known a 3 people off the top of my head who had that “career” with long hours who burned out after a few years. Whats the point?
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You forgot c) you have a life.
I don’t have kids, and I do have a career that I care about very much, and I don’t want to have a job that requires overtime.
I’m a mental health social worker and I’m willing to deal with a lot of crap that most people wouldn’t (last week I got punched in the face by a client) but there’s a lot more to my life than my career and I want to know that I’ll have time to take care of my relationships, my physical health, and enjoy every day while I can.
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I don’t disagree – but if you have a career (i.e. a track of jobs you plan on building upon over time) where you can’t have any sort of life – then you’re probably on the wrong career track.
I work around the clock – but I enjoy what I do – so I rarely feel worked to the bone. I get to live in Asia, so while I regularly have 9pm and 5am calls with the US, I can go to Bali for the weekend, so that’s a trade off I’m fine with.
It is all about priorities and balance.
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Personally, I love my salaried job. Sure the occasional 12 hour days suck, but there are also occasional 4-6 hour days. I like knowing that $X appears in my bank account and not tracking hours. For my job, tracking hours instead of tracking work would suck. I’ll go home when I have completed a sufficient amount of the work on my to do list, whether *I* decide that needs 5 hours or 12 hours.
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But see, most salaried jobs are not like that. In most salaried positions, there are periodic 12 hour days and almost NEVER 4-6 hour days. At least in my experience.
In my opinion, the “exempt” classification is nothing more than a scam. I have never worked in an office where it was culturally acceptable to work 40 hours a week. If you show up at 9 and leave at 5, you will be noticed. And I work in nonprofits!
If “Exemption” were truly fulfilling its purpose, then comp time would be mandatory. But it’s not, and exempt employees are getting ripped off.
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I agree with imelda above in that most salaried positions I’ve seen the newbie who works 40 hours a week getting their actual work done in that time is either told they need to adjust their thinking and work the normal 50+ hours a week the other salaried employees are putting in, or fired if they don’t pick up the hints in short order about working the extra time. Sometimes it isn’t about the “work” but rather the appearance.
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I was working full time (salary) and doing consulting (hourly) on the side. When the consulting gig wanted me to start working 40+ hours a week, I told him I would need a guarantee of 6 months pay in order to quit my full time job.
So in my consulting for him, I take a straight paycheck regardless of the number of hours I work. I nearly always work more than 40 hours, but the flexibility of a work-from-home anytime-I-want job made the reduced effective hourly pay worth it. (Reduced for that consulting job, I still make more than I did in my full-time job).
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There definitely are advantages to both. I’m on salary, which I like, because I have a guaranteed paycheque and my hours are a lot more flexible. When I was paid hourly (for the same job), I was always really particular about making sure I was in the office at a certain time, and left at a certain time, etc. Now, I swear, I haven’t been in by nine am in months! But all my work gets done, and I usually stay a bit later, so it all works out in the end. The flexibility is really just a great perk. Plus, my boss is really great about making sure that overtime is made up for. So like, my boss lets me save up hours that I put in when it’s busy, and take time off when it’s not. I probably put in an extra 2-3 days of overtime every quarter, which works out to an additional 8-10 days off every year, and my boss lets me take them! That’s not that typical, as far as I can tell. Still, it would be nice to have the opportunity to make a bit of extra money by overtime, but it’s all a wash in the end, I guess.
The other advantage is that your boss will, likely, be a lot more flexible about giving you unexpected time off. When my grandmother passed away suddenly last year, I took about four days off work to be with my family. I texted my boss to let her know what had happened, literally a half hour before I was supposed to be at the office, and that I’d be taking time off, and she just said to be with my family, and we’d figure the rest out later. I got paid for the full four days, and she just asked me to make up the equivalent of two days at a later point (extra hours here and there). I’m sure that wouldn’t have been the case if I were an hourly employee, and though it might have worked out in overtime over the next few months, I definitely couldn’t have afforded to just lose almost a full week’s pay.
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I’m hourly, and I love it. After my 8 hours, I’m out the door. However, I’m represented by a union, so even though I’m part time, I have excellent benefits, and my schedule and the number of hours I work every week do not change. Therefore, I’m guaranteed the same paycheck every two weeks, unless I work extra hours. Of course, I miss getting bonuses, but I’ll take autonomy over more money gladly.
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Very good points. The one and only time I’ve worked for a salary, it turned out that 14 hour days were the expected normal. No thank you. My current (salaried) boss works 60-70 hours a week because our section, formally with a staff of 10, has been reduced to 3. I often worry that I’m going to come in some Monday and find her dead of a heart attack.
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HEALTHCARE BENEFITS.
Usually this is the difference between hourly employees and salaried employees. (And sometimes retirement benefits e.g. 401k match, are usually only for salaried employees)
Yes, as a salaried employee you may end up working more hours for a ‘lower’ hourly rate. But when you factor in the additional benefit of healthcare, this is the reason for the difference.
I don’t buy the ‘management’ track option for salaried employees vs. hourly. If you are an awesome employee that they think you can advance and do great things and you just happen to be hourly, that won’t be the barrier.
Imagine this scenario where managment is thinking: “wow, bob has awesome management skills, and has some fantastic ideas, he could totally fix the problems at our company and send profits through the roof… alas he’s hourly, our hands are tied and there’s no way for him to advance…”
In my opinion it’s more likely that if you are an hourly employee in a possibly more menial role, then you just don’t have the same opportunities to show management how awesome you are. (And we’re never as awesome as we think we are).
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Health insurance coverage usually isn’t limited to salary workers. Most full time hourly jobs have health insurance too.
Part time and lower paid jobs are the ones that get healthcare less often. But even many of those get health insurance too.
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Ahh,I did not realize that. I think I was/have been operating off of a lot of presumptions.
Thanks for the reply!
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My whole industry is salaried, so it’s pretty moot for me. Doesn’t bother me, though, I’ve never known anyone who gets paid hourly who makes more than I do, gets better benefits than I do, gets more vacation time than I do, or who has a more flexible schedule than I do. I can’t complain.
Example:
The quote makes it seems like it applies to hourly employees too. I guess it would, if we had any, but in practice, it’s only salaried employees who get six weeks a year of paid vacation time.
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Do people take 6 weeks? What I see a lot of is every time folks have a chunk of vacation scheduled, they work insane hours in the weeks leading up to it, finishing up big projects they are solely responsible for, and then keep in touch during the whole time they’re gone, in case any of their pet customers or projects has and issue and because otherwise they’re completely buried in emails when they get back. That’s assuming they can find two or three weeks in a row between ‘very important’ project deadlines when they can take off.
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The rest of the world gets six weeks a year, only in America are the people worked to death. Just have a look around…..lots of overweight, stressed out people juggling way too many plates on a stick!
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Except Japan. You wouldn’t believe the crazy hours people here work. (especially teachers)
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True, I stand corrected….Japan
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I work in the Structural Engineering field. Typically the drafters are hourly and the engineers are salaried, but we both get paid for overtime usually. The hourly get time and a half, but as an engineer I get paid straight time for any extra I work. I think this became the standard because engineers will quit if you abuse the overtime thing. I guess it’s nice to be in a job that is sort of in demand and have colleagues that will not stand for being worked to death. This practice still holds true during the bad economy with construction in the toilet.
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“engineers will quit if you abuse the overtime thing”
That may apply to your area but it doesn’t apply to engineers in general. I know of many engineering roles that work long hours and don’t quit because of it. Long hours are considered the standard expectation in some areas.
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I sort of enjoy being in a nonexempt yet salaried position. I am guaranteed a salary of $35,500 a year (sucky for what I do, but I am on my way out) and benefits but if I work over 40 hours, I get one and a half times what would be my hourly salary ($16, so $24 an hour). The company simply doesn’t let us work more than 40 hours, but I am fine with that.
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My employer had to convert my job grade level to hourly. And while my manager said he would try to get my promoted as fast as possible, my experiencing being an hourly employee has changed my mind about being promoted for the reasons you specify above.
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Many salaried employees are in fact eligible for overtime pay, myself included. It may or may not be time and a half for everyone. The option to get overtime pay could be a huge deciding factor when someone is choosing to go salary or hourly, so I think this inaccuracy in your article should be corrected so that there is no confusion.
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Salaried positions are generally abused by some employers. In most cases, the job requires more hours than it should to do a good job. Non-exempt (hourly) jobs are clerical or clearly defined positions. I used to have an executive job that averaged 60-70 hours a week.
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I am currently hourly, making overtime in what is promising to be a VERY busy summer. But I know that in a year or so, I’ll probably be bumped to salary (with hopefully a decent payraise). I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not, but I figure it will do a lot more for my career than staying hourly will.
Even as hourly, I am allowed to leave early if we aren’t busy (without docking pay usually) but I still get payed overtime if I work more than 40 hours. I haven’t done this too much though, since I don’t want my boss to feel like I am taking advantage)
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I think it depends on who you work for but when I was in a salaried position I found they began to require me to work nearly 60-70 hours a week and valued my time far less than when I’d worked on an hourly basis. I actually had a meeting with the owner and explained to him that when I was hired I agreed to work occasional overtime to the tune of 10 or so hours a week when it was necessary. As the overtime became longer and constant I explained that if I worked that many more hours on a consistent basis for him it was time to either consider bumping my salary or hiring another person as I was essentially taking a pay cut by performing the job of almost 2 people instead of one. Luckily this worked for me and it wasn’t during difficult economic times. But I do believe that employers value time as a commodity of the employee far less in salaried positions and assume it’s for sale when it many not be.
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I’m self-employed and price projects according to an estimate of hours worked plus expenses and overhead, but I’m looking at this article from a purely analytical standpoint.
It seems to me to boil down to this:
a) If you work to put food on the table and your life interests lie elsewhere, hourly pay might be the thing for you. Leave work early and manage your softball team.
b) If you love what you do and want to reach high in your career, then you can only have salaried work.
c) There’s a grey area in between, which is maybe when people are moving up to middle management positions, and that’s when they have to decide between the two options listed above. All the while considering Peter’s Principle.
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I have worked as a contract consultant (hourly), and am currently working full-time(salary).
Income is income….happy to have it either way. ;0>>
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I agree with the post, but it also seems you are trying to fix the wrong problem.
The real problem is the slave driver mentality of many bosses and the BS about working overtime, important projects and all that crap.
We should not have to work overtime, we should not have to come in on sundays aor work extra hours because someelse does not want to have a life. With exceptions, very few jobs have life or death situations.
And being European I find the entire 10 days of holiday per year, including sick days ridiculous. In Europe we get 5 weeks of more, not including sick days. And with Europe I am not referring to the Greeks, but to strong healthy economies like Germany, Sweden, Norway, Danmark and the Netherlands.
That seems to me is the real problem that America needs to fix.
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YES
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I find that Europeans generally assume that Americans are driven to work more hours for less pay and less benefits and time off, and generally need to get a life, but this is a faulty assumption.
Many jobs in the US have generous time off policies. My firm has 10 holidays (where the office is closed and everyone is off), plus I get 5 weeks of vacation to use as I wish, and sick time to use at my discretion. Theoretically the sick time is not limited but if I were to be out more than a week at a time, I would likely need to go to short term disability which is another discussion. I rarely use sick days anyway so that is not much of a concern.
The idea that Americans don’t know how to stop and smell the roses, and allow themselves to be taken advantage of by big bad employers, is getting old. I work hard and I get plenty of time off to compensate, in addition to earning a good salary. I work to live; I do not live to work.
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I am happy to read that not all Americans have it as bad as I described. But does your situation apply to most Americans, or are you the exception to the rule?
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I suspect that you will find that the more menial jobs tend to have worse benefits/time off. (But USUALLY don’t require large amounts of overtime; Walmart would rather hire another cashier to work a shift, then pay one cashier 1.5x after 40 hours have already been logged).
Union jobs tend to have many benefits negotiated for their members including time off and strict rules around over time proceedures and monitoring of those rules for abuse.
Many ‘White Collar’ jobs tend to be where the sweet spot of good salary, regular hours and good benefits/time off occur. I don’t think that it’s easy to state how common it is though… some people will have it pretty good, and some people might be missing one of those items. e.g. The salary is good, the work is usually 40 hours, and the time off is good, but the benefits are weak.
In my experience, the larger the company, the better the benefits since they get a little bit in the ways of economies of scale… But it’s not true for everyone, and every company is different.
Also, some jobs are very clear up front about the expectations and benefits vs. cost trade offs. If you’re going to work for one of the big consulting firms, you are going to work 60+ hours a week and you’re going to be flying out monday morning and not coming home until friday night (if you’re not just staying there). You will get lots of great experience, the chance to do lots of projects for differenct companies, make $100k (is the normal starting price for MBA grads), and the health benefits are good. Time off exists and it’s 3-5 weeks… but did I mention the 60+ hour work week?
Many things are trade offs, and there’s a wide spectrum of what people in america experience.
“Your mileage may vary.” is one of my favorite phrases here
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Amerians get an average of 2-4 weeks vacation depending on seniority. We start with 2 weeks then typically get 3 weeks aver 5-10 years then by 20 years average is 4 weeks. This is private work force (not government).
See:
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2009/ownership/civilian/table23a.pdf
I got 4 weeks paid vacation at 10 years with unlimited sick days.
Obviously YMMV.
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Right, and that’s why companies and countries are booming, because employees work 37.5 hours a week with 6 weeks off.
Much of the wealth in Europe is still old money, and unless Europe increases its productivity in some way, it will start losing against giants like China, etc.
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I strongly disagree Alex, very strongly. First off, Europe, despite what the EU tries to portray is not one happy continent. There are big differences between the North and the South.
Second, working 37,5 hours is what some companies do, but certainly not all.
Yes, there are areas where Europe is getting fat and complacent, much like ancient Rome, and yes, we do have a very elaborate wellfare system and people take advantage of it. And yes, people do shun away form physical work and manufacturing and engineering and prefer government jobs and bank jobs and unsurance jobs. That is what is our real problem.
Losing to China? Perhaps, but so will the US. China has 1,3 billion inhabitants, once they are as productive as the Germans or the Japanese or the Americans, they will the most powerful economy.
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Sorry Jim, but in Europe we get those 5 weeks regardless of seniority. You get it from day one.
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