In 2011, men working full-time earned a median income of $48,765. Women earned just $38,373. That difference of more than $10,000 tells only part of the story of the continuing gender wage gap in the U.S. Depending on the industry, men in some states earn as much as $20,000 to $30,000 more a year than women. In some cases, the difference is even greater. Men in corporate managerial positions earn roughly $35,000 more than women working full-time in the same field.

Income inequality is severe in some industries, and there are certain states with concentrations of these businesses. In these states, the gender earnings gap for full-time workers is extremely high. In Wyoming, where there are several of these "pay disparity" occupations, women earned $17,838 less than men in 2011 — the largest disparity among all states. Based on data from the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey, 24/7 Wall St. identified the worst-paying states for women.

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In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Institute for Women’s Policy Research study director Ariane Hegewisch explained that the biggest reason for the pay gap between men and women in these states came down to where people are employed. While the gap in pay still exists in nearly every occupation, she said, it is much narrower in fields such as health care, education and real estate. Nationally, the income gap for educational services is $7,408, while in real estate it is less than $5,000.

In states where more people are employed in blue-collar work, women are more likely to work in sectors where the pay is much lower than it is for men in blue-collar positions.

Hegewisch explained that in states where more workers are blue collar, men are able to find employment in jobs such as resource collection and construction — positions that are still predominantly male and allow for bonuses and overtime and generally higher pay. In North Dakota, for example, the booming natural gas industry employs hundreds of thousands of workers. In 2011, 90.9 percent of oil, mining and extraction workers in the state were male. Those few women who were employed in that industry earned $46,301 less than men. All five states with the highest proportions of workers in this field are among the 10 with the highest gender wage gap.

In states like North Dakota, women are often found to be working in lower-paying fields, especially retail. While the income gender gap is closer to the national wage gap in this field, at less than $9,000, the fact that a disproportionately large number of women are employed in this field results in a wide income gap statewide. In West Virginia — which has one of the greatest gender wage gaps in the country — the largest employer is Wal-Mart Stores Inc. As of 2011, 54.8 percent of West Virginian retail workers were women, the third-highest proportion in the country. Women working full-time in retail in West Virginia earned a median of just $14,304.

In the states with the largest wage gap between men and women, it is not always the case that full-time income for women is lower than in other states. In five of the 10 states, income for women was among the top 10 in the country. However, in those states, earnings among men were even higher. For example, in Massachusetts, women working full-time earned a median of $47,302, the fourth highest in the country. However, men in the state earned more than $60,000.

The gap in pay in some of these states is even more pronounced in their cities. In five major metropolitan statistical areas, male pay exceeds female pay by at least $20,000. Most of the 10 metro areas with the widest gender pay gap are in the 10 states with the highest pay gaps. In Casper, Wyo., which has the worst pay gap in the country, men earn more than $25,000 more than women.

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To identify the states that pay women the least, 24/7 Wall St. compared the median incomes for the past 12 months of both men and women who worked full-time, year-round in each state, based on data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and released as part of the 2011 American Community Survey report. From the survey, we included in our analysis the proportion of workers in each state employed in each industry, as well as the gender distribution and gender-specific income in each of these industries. We also reviewed 2011 unemployment rates.

1. Wyoming

• Difference in full-time, year-round income: $17,838
• Female full-time, year-round median income: $35,698 (24th lowest)
• Male full-time, year-round median income: $53,536 (ninth highest)
• 2011 unemployment rate: 6 percent (seventh lowest)

Much of Wyoming’s pay gap can be attributed to the jobs available in the state. Wyoming had the highest percentage of people working in occupations involving natural resources, construction and maintenance, as well as agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting and mining. While those jobs, notably in mining and oil production, tend to be male-dominated and higher-paying, the Wyoming Women’s Foundation found pay gaps still persisted in other jobs that are not necessarily male-dominated. The Casper metropolitan area had the largest gap of all 366 metropolitan areas in terms of pay between men and women. The median income for a man working full-time was $25,222 higher than for a woman working full-time.

2. Alaska

• Difference in full-time, year-round income: $15,285
• Female full-time, year-round median income: $41,529 (11th highest)
• Male full-time, year-round median income: $56,814 (fifth highest)
• 2011 unemployment rate: 7.6 percent (22nd lowest)

Alaska’s job market, similar to many other states on the list, has benefited from an oil and gas boom, which tends to pay high wages but is a male-dominated field. Meanwhile, the finance, insurance, real estate and rental properties occupations — fields with a lower pay gap compared to others — comprised a national-low 4 percent of jobs in the state. Including part-time workers, the difference in median income between men and women was higher than any other state, with a $16,474 discrepancy. The National Women's Law Center found that women made up roughly two out of every three minimum wage workers in Alaska. High educational attainment by women did not erase the pay gap. As a whole, Alaskan women with a bachelor’s degree earned less than men with just some college or an associate degree.

3. Louisiana

• Difference in full-time, year-round income: $15,130
• Female full-time, year-round median income: $32,633 (ninth lowest)
• Male full-time, year-round median income: $47,763 (20th highest)
• 2011 unemployment rate: 7.3 percent (16th lowest)

More than 8 percent of jobs in Louisiana were in construction, more than any other state, with more than 90 percent of those construction jobs filled by men. Meanwhile, the 10.6 percent of jobs in arts, entertainment, recreation and food services, which generally offer lower pay, were the seventh highest of all states. Women filled more than 55 percent of those jobs. Two Louisiana metropolitan areas were among the 10 areas with the highest wage gap between men and women. Women in the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux metro area with full-time, year-round jobs earned $20,315 less than men with similar positions, which is the fourth largest wage gap. Women in Lake Charles earned $18,462 less, the 10th largest gap.

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4. Utah

• Difference in full-time, year-round income: $15,094
• Female full-time, year-round median income: $34,052 (13th lowest)
• Male full-time, year-round median income: $49,146 (19th highest)
• 2011 unemployment rate: 6.7 percent (11th lowest)

In 2011, Utah women with full-time, year-round jobs earned $15,094 less than men in those kinds of positions. But if part-time jobs are included, women earned $16,236 less than men in 2011, a higher pay gap than any state but Alaska. Two metropolitan areas in Utah earned a spot among the 20 metro areas with the highest pay gap between men and women. Women in the Provo-Orem metro area with full-time, year-round positions earned $20,446 less than men in 2011, the third highest gap in the country. Meanwhile, women in the Ogden-Clearfield metro area earned $17,587 less than men, the 13th largest gap.

5. Washington

• Difference in full-time, year-round income:$13,979
• Female full-time, year-round median income: $41,817 (ninth highest)
• Male full-time, year-round median income: $55,796 (sixth highest)
• 2011 unemployment rate: 9.2 percent (16th highest)

As of 2011, Washington state had one of the highest proportions of workers in professional, scientific and management positions. Women in those positions earned nearly $22,500 less than men did. In Washington’s Bremerton-Silverdale metropolitan area, women earned $18,650 less than men — the ninth biggest earnings gap among all U.S. metropolitan areas. In the state's professional, scientific and management positions, which account for a high 11.9 percent of all positions in the state, median earning for men exceeded that for women by $22,487. This was nearly $10,000 higher than the national wage gap in this industry.

Click here to read the rest of 24/7 Wall St.'s the worst-paying states for women

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Over the years, the minimum wage has not kept pace with the rate of inflation, represented by the red line on the graph.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: If there’s been one theme of the 2012 election, it’s been employment. And for the first time since 2008, some significant progress has been made: The unemployment rate is currently 7.8 percent, the lowest it’s been since President Obama took office.

But not all jobs are created equal. While 60 percent of job losses since the recession have been midwage positions, 58 percent of the growth has been in low-wage jobs. Many of these added positions pay the minimum wage, or little more than the minimum wage.

In light of the growing population of low-wage earners and the ongoing discussion of income inequality in the United States (the 99 percent versus the 1 percent, or the 47 percent versus the 53 percent), LearnVest wanted to take a closer look at the current minimum wage in the United States.

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In fact, this past summer, the Fair Minimum Wage Act was introduced in Congress to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 and index it to inflation, making it a current political issue. Though the bill is currently sitting with a committee awaiting further action, if it passes, it could significantly change millions of Americans’ answer to the question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

The state of the minimum wage

The first minimum wage law was passed in 1938, guaranteeing workers at least 25 cents an hour. The heyday of the minimum wage was in the late 1960s, when the wage was high enough relative to the cost of living to provide a secure income. Since then, it’s risen slowly but surely to $7.25 an hour, which adds up to $15,080 a year for full-time employees.

While the dollar amount has increased over time, the real value has not — it has declined by 30 percent since 1968 because over the years the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation, which is the increase in the general cost of goods and services over time. That means workers aren’t getting as much bang for their buck, so to speak.

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The yearly $15,080 made by a full-time minimum-wage worker, who typically works in retail or food preparation, or as a personal and home-care aide, office clerk, customer service rep, waiter/waitress or construction laborer, is below the poverty level for a two-person household. And for employees working for tips, the minimum wage is even lower — a measly $2.13 an hour.

While the minimum wage barely provides a solid living as is, studies have shown that workers earning the minimum are actually being underpaid by their employers. A 2008 study of low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York found that 26 percent were paid less than the minimum wage, 70 percent worked off the clock before or after their shift and 76 percent were underpaid for overtime hours. All told, this resulted in an average loss of $2,634 in earnings for these workers.

Proponents of the Fair Minimum Wage Act argue that raising the minimum wage to $9.80, and then “indexing” it to inflation so that it rises at the same rate would help ensure that these low-wage earners would take home enough salary to live on and pay for basic goods and services. But would it?

Reasons for raising the minimum wage

1. The minimum wage is below the living wage, exacerbating poverty in the United States

A living wage ensures that a worker can pay for basic necessities like housing, food, transportation to work and health care. A common definition states that the living wage should be high enough that no more than 30 percent of take-home pay needs to be spent on housing.

But full-time employees being paid the current minimum wage will have incomes below the living wage in most areas of the country. In dollar terms, that means that if you are a full-time worker supporting a family of four on the current minimum wage, your household income is $7,000 below the poverty line. Proponents of raising the minimum wage to a living wage argue that doing so would give workers and their families a better chance of climbing out of debt and poverty.

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As an increasing number of workers take on low-wage jobs, poverty in the United States has increased: In 2005, 12.6 percent of Americans were living in poverty, compared to 15.7 percent this year (almost 50 million citizens). That's the highest rate of poverty since 1965. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage would hopefully help to reverse this trend.

2. A higher minimum wage means more consumer spending overall

Higher wages don’t just benefit the individual earner. They also help the economy at large by increasing consumer spending. One 2011 study by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank showed that every dollar added to the hourly minimum wage resulted in $2,800 in yearly additional consumer spending by that worker’s household.

Additionally, a 2009 study from the Economic Policy Institute predicted that upping the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour would result in $60 billion in additional spending over two years. Furthermore, this additional consumer spending would lead to more job creation — an estimated 100,000 new full-time jobs.

3. Workers making more than the minimum wage would also see their earnings increase

Many workers who earn more than the minimum wage — 28 million — would also see their earnings increase as a result of raising the minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Why? The minimum wage is seen as the base number from which their wages are calculated, so if that number is raised, their earnings will increase accordingly, and that will lead to even more consumer spending.

Is there a good reason not to raise the minimum wage?

With all the seeming benefits to raising the minimum wage, is there a compelling reason not to raise it, at the very least to a living wage? And why shouldn’t it be indexed to inflation?

Those opposed to raising it often argue that doing so will put too great a strain on employers concerned with keeping costs down, which will ultimately lead to companies being forced to slash jobs to stay afloat. However, economists like Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst showed that over a 16-year period, areas that raised the minimum wage did not see more employment loss than comparable areas with lower minimum wages.

Additionally, two-thirds of the low-wage workers in the United States work for large companies with 100 or more employees who are more able to absorb the higher cost of hourly wages, as opposed to small mom-and-pop operations. Looking at the 50 largest employers of low-wage workers (companies like Wal-Mart, KFC and McDonald’s), more than 90 percent were profitable last year, meaning that they are unlikely to be in a position where raising the minimum wage to a living wage would significantly affect their ability to retain the same number of employees.

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While more than 100 Democrats helped to introduce the bill in the House of Representatives during the summer to raise the minimum wage, most Republicans will likely argue that the fragile economy prohibits such a drastic change to the minimum wage. Though President Obama campaigned in 2008 on the promise to raise the minimum wage, he has not been active in that fight in some time, and in March, Mitt Romney retracted comments he had made as recently as January saying that he would like to see the minimum wage indexed to inflation.

Despite the likely political standstill on the minimum wage issue, recent polls have shown that 70 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage and believe that doing so has the power to help the economy in these uncertain times.

This post originally appeared on LearnVest as 'How Raising the Minimum Wage Would Help the Economy'

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One of the most common complaints is workers who fail to get overtime pay as required by law.

There’s a simple workplace axiom: You put in your hours and get paid for them. Alas, this doesn’t always happen.

There’s been a record spike in wage and hour violation claims by employees thanks to sustained tough economic times, an increase in enforcement by the government, and confusion over -- or disregard of -- overtime pay provisions.

Seyfarth Shaw

Wage and hour lawsuits have been soaring, according to federal judicial caseload statistics.

Already this year, there have been a record number of lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which covers wage and hour provisions, with 7,064 filed so far this year. That's up from 7,006 filed for all of 2011 and just 2,035 cases filed a decade ago, according to data compiled by employment law firm Seyfarth Shaw.

The Department of Labor's wage and hour division collected a record $224 million in back wages from employers in the latest fiscal year for more than 275,000 workers.

“Many workers still have a hard time taking advantage of their legal protections,” said Jeffrey Michael Hirsch, associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s law school and a contributing editor to the Workplace Prof Blog.  “Low-wage employees, in particular, often don't earn enough to attract attorneys, although class actions might help in some cases, so you see a lot of cases of unremedied wage theft.”

In those cases, he said, the Labor Department sometimes gets involved, especially to "send a message to employers."

The Labor Department, which sees 125 to 150 cases annually, has stepped up its efforts and pursues litigation when it cannot settle out of court, said Sonia Melendez, a spokeswoman for the agency.

“The wage and hour division has stepped up enforcement efforts on behalf of vulnerable workers — such as low-wage workers, migrant or seasonal laborers, workers with limited English language skills and workers who are unaware of their rights or are reluctant to file a complaint when subject to labor violations,” she said.

The bulk of wage and hour lawsuits deal with  misclassification of employees, alleged uncompensated ‘work’ performed off the clock and miscalculation of overtime pay, said Richard Alfred, an attorney and chairman of Seyfarth Shaw's wage and hour litigation practice.

He attributes the rise in lawsuits to: 

• Weakness of the economy, resulting in layoffs
• Outdated federal and state laws, which have failed to keep up with changes in technology
• A lack of clarity in existing law, making it difficult to classify which workers need to be paid for overtime
• Potential for lucrative recovery by plaintiffs and their attorneys

High-profile cases, such as a wage and hour case involving Wal-Mart, have gotten many employees, employers and lawyers to stand up and take notice.

In May, Wal-Mart agreed to pay nearly $5 million in back wages and damages to more than 4,500 employees who were misclassifed as being exempt from overtime rules. That paled in comparison to the $352 million the company paid in 2008 to settle allegations it didn't provide workers with proper rest and meal breaks but served notice that the Labor Department is paying close attention.

“Misclassification of employees as exempt from FLSA coverage is a costly problem with adverse consequences for employees and corporations,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis at the time of the announcement. “Let this be a signal to other companies that when violations are found, the Labor Department will take appropriate action to ensure that workers receive the wages they have earned.”

Massive monetary awards have increased the profile of such cases, making them attractive to some lawyers, Hirsch said. But he said the awards also have made smart employers more careful. "One thing a lot of management-side firms do is perform internal audits for clients to make sure there aren't problems, particularly with overtime classifications," he said.

Not everyone is as focused on the issue, he added. “I'd like to think that employers of low-wage workers are getting the message, but I'm not sure that's the case in general. You still hear about violations all the time.”

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It’s no secret that many employees dread performance reviews. What is surprising, however, is that the very people who help promote them in companies dislike them too.

Nearly half of human resources managers don’t think annual performance reviews are accurate appraisals of employee performance, according to a recently released survey by the Society of Human Resource Management and Globoforce, an employee recognition company. 

The poll found that 45 percent of HR leaders thought reviews weren’t good gauges of a worker’s performance, compared to 39 percent last year. The increase points to “a more heightened concern from HR leaders about the shortfalls of traditional performance management,” said Globoforce CEO Eric Mosley. The email survey, taken from December 2011 through January 2012, polled 770 HR professionals who work for companies with 500 or more employees.

“Annual performance reviews continue to be the lightning rod for what’s wrong with traditional performance management,” he added.

The benefits versus the pitfalls of such reviews are part of an ongoing debate in American corporations. But there is no real movement to reassess this often-flawed management tool because it’s been around for years and is so ingrained in the workplace.

Samuel Culbert, author of “Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing--and Focus on What Really Matters,” is calling for the demise of performance reviews.

Culbert, a management professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, is against performance reviews because they can be demoralizing to workers, are not accurate or objective, and they use meaningless metrics.

“If it were God giving me a review that would be fair. But anyone short of God, I don’t think so,” he quipped.

When asked why employers keep administering reviews even though the recent data shows many HR managers aren’t on board, he had a list of reasons.

“Even though they hate getting and giving reviews and know they are bogus, they are comfortable with it,” he explained. “It’s the enemy they know.”

He also believes managers “love the sense of power they get from performance reviews. They like the fact that under the performance review, they are all-knowing. What they say is all that counts. Who doesn’t like that kind of power?”

And in the end, he maintained, it’s the human resources department that gets “much of its power from championing, running and having access to all the reviews. They have a lot of self-interest in preserving this ridiculous, morale-busting and results-damaging practice.”

Globoforce’s Mosley thinks it’s just a matter of habit for most employers, but he said some organizations are looking for alternatives, including “crowdsourcing feedback.”

It’s basically peer-to-peer reviews in real time, he explained. His company provides a web-based solution whereby employees and managers can nominate each other for rewards for a host of things they do at work, everything from helping out on a project to coming up with a new innovation. All that information is documented in a database, and managers can use the data to assess worker performance over a whole year, without forgetting the many contributions employees made, he said.

If crowdsourcing in the review process does catch on, employees will have more than just their boss’ opinion to worry about come review and raise season. It might be time to start playing some office politics.

Now that the economy has been adding jobs at a steady clip, more of us are ready to tell our boss to “show me the money!”

After years of seeing tiny or non-existent pay increases, employees are more optimistic than they have been in four years that employers will hop on the raise bandwagon soon, according to a study released Wednesday by Glassdoor, a job listings site.

Raise optimists outnumbered pessimists for the first time since 2008, when the website began its quarterly Employment Confidence Survey.

Among the more than 2,000 adults polled last month by Glassdoor:

• 43 percent said they expected a raise in the next 12 months.
• 38 percent said they did not.
• 46 percent said they expected their company outlook to improve in the next six months, up 6 points from three months earlier.

Is this just wishful thinking on the part of recession weary workers?Maybe not.

Raises are indeed slowly making a comeback, said Ken Abosch, group compensation leader for Aon Hewitt, a human resources consulting firm.

But don’t expect your employer to break the bank.

Aon Hewitt surveyed nearly 1,500 U.S. companies last year about expectations for pay increases in 2012 and found employers planned to pay an average raise of 2.9 percent, up slightly from 2.8 percent in 2011, although way up from the record low 1.4 percent for 2009.

“Organizations are still very concerned with the health of economy, and they’re feeling pressures of global economy,” Abosch said. Many firms, he added, “fought hard in the last few years to gain control back over their fixed costs.”

Unfortunately for you working stiffs, your base salary is a big chunk of those costs, so employers want to do everything they can to keep a lid on it.

On the bright side, he added, more employers are paying out bonuses.

“Our statistics show that 90 percent of U.S. companies are providing bonuses as far down as the person sweeping the floor in the factory,” he said. That is up from 78 percent in 2005 and about 50 percent just 15 years ago.

The Aon Hewitt survey found:

• 86 percent of employers said they would fund variable pay based on company performance this year. In some cases, however, that is being combined with reduced merit pay raises and even layoffs.
• Nearly one in five employees (19 percent) are concerned they could be laid off in the next six months, up two points from the fourth quarter after declining the preceding two quarters.
• One-third of employees are concerned coworkers could be laid off in the next six months.

“Positive economic and company indicators are driving increased optimism around pay raises and company outlook, but that optimism hasn’t yet spilled over into individual job security or view of the job market,” said Rusty Rueff, career and workplace expert for Glassdoor.

“Employers should pay attention to employee expectations around pay and be more transparent to ensure employee sentiment is aligned with reality, which will help avoid disappointment that can impact morale.”

Young adults may be facing their own version of “The Hunger Games” when entering the workforce today because they’re probably going to be hungry for more money.

Wages for young workers have been declining for more than a decade. They fell off a cliff during the Great Recession to levels not seen since the 1970s for certain groups of entry-level workers, according to new data from center-left think tank the Economic Policy Institute.

(OK, maybe it’s not exactly “The Hunger Games” just yet. In that dystopian future, depicted in a trilogy of novels and now a movie, a reality TV show follows teens fighting to their death, with the winner earning food for his/her home state. But you get our point.)

Not surprisingly, the news is worse for those with less education; and the pay gap between entry level men and women no matter what the education level is still alive and well.

Entry-level wages for high school graduates were actually lower than they were in the 1970s. For college grads, starting wages were below what their counterparts pocketed in the late 1990s. Today, the average wage for all these young adults, no matter education level, is about $15 an hour.

And whether they have a college degree or not, women still aren’t bringing home as much bacon as the men, but the gap has been narrowing. The good news, unfortunately, is partly attributable to the fact that the guys are getting paid less because of the economy.

“When the labor market is strong for workers the prospects for young workers are very strong, and when the labor market is weak their prospects are very weak,” maintained the Institute’s president Lawrence Mishel about the data that’s part of his forthcoming book ‘The State of Working America” due out in August. “The recent decade affirms this general finding, as the wages of entry-level workers have fared extremely poorly during this period of general wage stagnation.”

Here’s a breakdown of the numbers:

• The entry-level hourly wage of a young male high school graduate in 2011 was 25.3 percent less than that for the equivalent worker in 1979, a drop of roughly $4.00 per hour in 2011.
• Among women, the entry-level high school wage fell 14.2 percent over the same period, and dropped by $1.64 last year.
• Wages for high-school educated women are still far below those of their male counterparts, a gap of 15 percent.
• In 2011 the hourly wage of entry-level male college graduates was just a bit over $1.00 higher than in 1979, a rise of 5.2 percent over thirty-two years.
• Women college grads did better, with their wages growing by 15.4 percent, or $2.50, from 1979 to 2011.
• The gender pay gap among this group, however, still persists. The hourly wage for college educated men was $21.68 in 2011, compared with $18.80 for women.

Too bad young adults don't qualify for child ticket prices anymore. Adult tickets for the upcoming "The Hunger Games" movie are going for $11 a pop.

The folks on Wall Street appear to be tightening the purse strings.

A new report finds that year-end bonuses for Wall Street workers are expected to fall by an average of 20 to 30 percent this year, as compared to last year.

Blame the sluggish economy and the topsy-turvy markets. The report from Johnson Associates, a compensation consulting firm, said recent economic uncertainty and roiling world markets are driving many financial services firms to reduce the pot of money they allocate toward bonuses.

“This year started with great promise for a banner year on Wall Street, but hopes for larger bonuses faded over the summer and continue to dim as we approach year end,” Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, said in a release announcing the results.

Wall Street bonuses also fell sharply in 2008, in the wake of the financial crisis. But they rebounded in 2009 and 2010 even as many other sectors of the economy continued to struggle.

This year, however, financial services firms also have been dragged down by the difficult economy. Some banks reported disappointing earnings in the most recent quarter, and there also have been other signs of belt tightening.

Bank of America, for example, has announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers.

The Johnson Associates report said traders and senior management are expected to see the biggest hits to their bonuses. Some Wall Street workers, such as those dealing with very wealthy clients, could still see a slight bump in bonuses.

The company bases its estimates on public data and its own analysis of financial institutions.

The outlook for 2012 isn't so cheery for U.S. bankers, either. Johnson Associates said it expected firms to continue to cut jobs in the U.S. but add staff in emerging markets. Still, some financial services employees may see their bonuses improve.

Of course, Wall Street workers probably won't be too pinched. Even with a smaller bonus, most take home handsome salaries — something that hasn't gone unnoticed by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In an interview with The New York Times’ DealBook, Johnson said he expects people to continue to focus heavily on how much money Wall Street workers make, especially in light of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Johnson told The New York Times that Wall Street executives “haven’t gotten the memo at all.”

American workers may get a slight raise in 2012, but the weak economy will likely still keep employers from getting too generous with the pay increases.

That’s according to a new survey from Towers Watson, a professional services firm. The company found U.S. employers are planning to increase pay for salaried, nonexecutive employees by an average of 2.8 percent next year.

Employees who are paid by the hour can expect an average 2.7 percent increase, according to the survey.

That’s up slightly from an average increase of 2.6 percent this year and the year before, according to Towers Watson, which surveyed 773 U.S. companies earlier this summer to get the data. The results included those who plan no increases.

A separate survey from earlier this year, which was also conducted by Towers Watson but used a smaller group of companies, found that employers were expecting to offer slightly higher raises this year. Since then, however, many people have grown more pessimistic about the economy.

A similar study by another firm, Mercer, found that employees should expect a 3 percent raise next year — as long as they perform.

Even a small raise might be good news for many Americans who feel like they are working harder than ever. The push to do more has left many workers feeling pretty unhappy. 

If you are lucky enough to have a job, you should see a base pay increase of about 3 percent next year, about the same as this year’s projected 2.9 percent, according to a new survey. But pay increases will vary according to performance as companies try to retain top talent while struggling with anemic revenue growth in a sluggish economy, according to the report from Mercer, a consulting firm.

“Differentiating salary increases based on performance has become a necessity with limited resources,”  said Catherine Hartmann, a principal with Mercer. “In this less-than-robust environment, top-performing employees are an employers’ competitive weapon and they are doing their best to reward them accordingly.”

As a result more than two-thirds of employers in the survey said they use some type of pay-for-performance  program to differentiate pay and retain top talent. And the gap in pay between the highest and lowest-performing employees is likely to widen.

Top-rated employees are likely to see average pay raises of 4.4 percent, while the lowest-rated employees typically will see pay virtually unchanged.

Mercer surveys 1,200 large and midsized employees representing 12 million workers for the annual survey, which has been done for more than 20 years. For more details on the survey, click here.

Most recent graduates are stuck taking lower-paying jobs that are less likely to offer health insurance, according to a Rutgers University poll.

Just over half of the 571 graduates of public and private four-year schools surveyed by the school have full-time jobs, while just under half said their first jobs didn’t really require bachelor’s degrees. Nearly half said their parents are helping them financially.

The college graduates in the poll left school between 2006 and 2010. The survey found that those who graduated between 2006 and 2008 fared better than those who graduated in 2009 or 2010. The earlier grads were paid about $3,000 a year more in their first jobs, and 88 percent of them received health insurance, compared with 77 percent of the more recent grads.

The findings of the poll were reported by the Associated Press.