Concept
Salary
Overview
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 wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. Salary can also be considered as the cost of hiring and keeping human resources for corporate operations, and is hence referred to as personnel expense or salary expense. In accounting, salaries are recorded in payroll accounts.
A salary is a fixed amount of money or compensation paid to an employee by an employer in return for work performed. It is typically paid at fixed intervals, such as monthly payments equal to one-twelfth of the annual salary.
Salaries are typically determined by comparing market pay-rates for people performing similar work in similar industries in the same region. Salary is also determined by leveling the pay rates and salary ranges established by an individual employer. Salary is also affected by the number of people available to perform the specific job in the employer's employment locale (supply and demand).
The total remuneration for work includes employee benefits and gross salary. After payment of payroll taxes the remainder is net salary or disposable income.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Salary is discussed.
REWARD, is either of Gift, or by Contract. When by Contract, it is called Salary, and Wages; which is benefit due for service performed, or promised. When of Gift, it is benefit proceeding from the Grace of them that bestow it, to encourage, or enable men to do them service.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
names the idea; states what it is
Whoever derives his revenue from a fund which is his own, must draw it either from his labour, from his stock, or from his land. The revenue derived from labour is called wages; that derived from stock, by the person who manages or employs it, is called profit; that derived from it by the person who does not employ it himself, but lends it to another, is called the interest or the use of money. It is the…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
states what it is
There is, of course, a great difference between limiting their numbers by excluding other people, and doing the same thing by a restraint imposed on themselves; but the one as much as the other shows a clear perception of the relation between their numbers and their remuneration. The principle is understood in its application to any one employment, but not to the general mass of employment. For this there are…
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
states what it is
And is not the king, is not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect the National Assembly, likewise paid? Instead of seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary is given for the exercise of those rights. All your resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all the works of your doctors in religion and politics, have industriously…
Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03
states what it is; names the idea
It negatives what has often been proposed as a means of rendering Parliament accessible to persons of all ranks and circumstances--the payment of members of Parliament. If, as in some of our colonies, there are scarcely any fit persons who can afford to attend to an unpaid occupation, the payment should be an indemnity for loss of time or money, not a salary. The greater latitude of choice which a salary would give…
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
names the idea
Related ideas
- Italy
- Middle Ages
- Monarch
- Mercantilism
- Mesopotamia
- Industrialisation
- Western world
- Roman Empire
- Spain
- Slavery
- Europe
Place in the tradition
Part of Liberalism.