Salary
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2008-07-04T08:33:47Z
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{{Unreferenced|date=January 2007}}
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[[Image:Romanino paga-operai Trento.JPG|thumb|300px|right|[[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 may be specified in an [[employment contract]]. It is contrasted with piece [[wage]]s, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis.
From the point of a view of running a [[business]], salary can also be viewed as the cost of acquiring [[human resources]] for running [[Business Operations|operations]], and is then termed personnel expense or salary expense. In accounting, salaries are recorded in payroll [[account]]s.
==History==
===First paid salary===
While there is no first [[Pay stub#Paycheck|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 (economics)|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 [[Urban Revolution|city]] during the [[Neolithic Revolution]], sometime between 10,000 BC and 6,000 BC.
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 [[monarch]]y or ruling elite. Depending on the translation of [http://bible.cc/ezra/4-14.htm Ezra 4:14], the servants of King [[Artaxerxes I]] of [[Persian Empire|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 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 [[Pliny's Natural History|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. . ." [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/31*.html ''Plinius Naturalis Historia XXXI.''] Others note that ''soldier'' more likely derives from the
[[solidus (coin)|gold solidus]], with which soldiers were known to have been paid, and maintain instead that the ''salarium'' was either an allowance [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=salary for the purchase of salt] or the price of having soldiers [http://www.salt.org.il/arch.html conquer salt supplies] and [http://www.salt.org.il/turkey.html guard the Salt Roads] (''Via Salarium'') that led to Rome.
===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."
Yet within the [[Roman Empire]] or (later) [[medieval]] and [[pre-industrial]] [[Europe]] and its [[Mercantilism|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]] [[guild]]s, or communal work and ownership, as with [[medieval universities]] and [[monastery|monasteries]].
===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]]).
===Share in earnings as payment===
In [[corporation]]s of this time, such as the several [[East India Companies]], many managers would have been remunerated as owner-[[shareholder]]s. Such a [[remuneration]] scheme is still common today in [[accounting]], investment, and [[law firm]] [[partnership]]s where the leading [[profession]]als are [[ownership equity|equity]] partners, and do not technically receive a salary, but rather make a periodic "draw" against their share of annual earnings.
===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-[[Economies of scale|scale]] enterprises being created.
New [[managerial economics|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.
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.
===Salaried employment in the 20th century===
In the 20th century, the rise of the [[service economy]] made salaried employment even more common in [[developed country|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.
===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), [[perquisite|benefits and perquisites]] (or perks), and various other tools which help employers link rewards to an employee's measured performance.
==Salaries in the U.S.==
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 six categories of salaried workers exempt from overtime provisions are:
(1) [http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17b_executive.htm Executive Employees], who hire, fire and direct others;
(2) [http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17c_administrative.htm Administrative Employees], exercising discretion as part of office work;
(3) Learned [http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17d_professional.htm Professional Employees], such as medical practitioners, lawyers,<ref>See [http://www.alreadybored.com] for attorney salaries at top U.S. law firms. </ref> engineers, dentists, veterinarians, accountants;
(4) ''Creative Professional Employees'' in an artistic field; (5) [http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm Computer Employees], who must meet certain threshold tests; and (6) [http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17f_outsidesales.htm 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]]
==See also==
{{wiktionary|salary}}
* [[Executive compensation]]
* [[List of single-digit salary earners]]
* [[List of largest sports contracts]]
* [[List of highest paid baseball players]]
* [[List of Canadian political offices by salary]]
* [[Medical specialties]], includes salaries respectively
== External links ==
* [http://business.17things.com/what-are-salary-requirements.html 17 Things] Explanation of salary requirements and how to establish these.
[[Category:Human resource management]]
[[Category:Income]]
[[Category:Recruitment]]
[[ar:راتب أساسي]]
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[[cs:Plat]]
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[[es:Salario]]
[[eo:Salajro]]
[[fr:Salaire]]
[[id:Gaji]]
[[it:Salario]]
[[nl:arbeidsloon]]
[[ja:給与]]
[[pl:płaca]]
[[pt:Salário]]
[[ru:Заработная плата]]
[[tr:Ücret]]
[[zh:工资]]