A small rise in the minimum wage in Britain’s main city regions would encourage employers to deploy workers more productively and help boost local economies by more than £1bn, says a thinktank. According to the study, by the Smith Institute, employers need the spur of a higher minimum wage to shake them out of a spiral of low productivity and low growth that depresses company revenues and has trapped about 2 million workers on the current minimum wage of £7.38 an hour...

Iceland has made it illegal to pay men more than women. A new law enforcing equal pay between genders came into effect on January 1, 2018, according to Al Jazeera. Under the legislation, firms that employ more than 25 people are obliged to obtain a government certificate demonstrating pay equality, or they will face fines. The law was announced on March 8 on International Women's Day 2017 as part of a drive by the nation to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022.

Pay is rising much faster for the top 1% of earners compared with those on average salaries in the richest countries, according to a report calling on governments to do more to tackle “wageless growth” since the financial crisis. Despite more people being in work than at any time since the onset of the banking crisis a decade ago, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said wage growth was still “missing in action” across the 35 countries represented by the Paris-based group of wealthy nations.

A new analysis about Uber drivers’ wages finds that they take home about $9.21 an hour, or less than minimum wage in many of the biggest markets where the ride-hailing service operates. The analysis, by the pro-labor think tank Economic Policy Institute, builds on a recent MIT study that at first said that Uber drivers made an average of $3.37 an hour, then revised that figure to a median $8.55 an hour.

Uber has shared some numbers about driver earnings in economic papers, usually through collaborations with respected academics. But the figures it’s given out are hard to compare with one another. A January 2018 paper that Uber collaborated on used “gross earnings” ($21.07 an hour), or what the driver makes before costs such as gas and vehicle depreciation, as well as Uber’s service fee, are deducted. Earlier research from Uber’s team and Princeton economist Alan Krueger examined earnings “net of Uber’s fees,” but before driver expenses ($20.19 an hour).

In his 20s, Chris Hughes co-founded Facebook Inc., helped elect a U.S. president, and made almost half-a-billion dollars. Then he turned 30 and, as he freely admits, his lucky streak came to an abrupt, high-profile end after a disastrous attempt to turn around the New Republic magazine. Hughes, 34, now devotes his time to evangelizing for higher taxes on the rich, such as himself. He's proposing that the government give a guaranteed income of $500 a month to every working American earning less than $50,000 a year...

Would a $500 monthly check, no strings attached, help more working families succeed? It's a bold idea that's gaining proponents in Silicon Valley — and one that the co-founder of Facebook is pushing hard. "If you're working hard trying to make ends meet, you shouldn't live in poverty in America," Chris Hughes told CNBC in an interview. "It sounds so simple but unfortunately it's not true."

Did Trump cause an "instantaneous surge" in the stock market and "amazing" growth? Sure, for the already wealthy. “The World Economic Forum is lucky to have [Donald Trump] addressing them,” said CNBC host Becky Quick. Quick told industry journal TVNewser that Trump’s recent appearance in Davos, Switzerland, would make it “the perfect venue for us to get to the heart of what is powering the engine behind this amazing surge in global and domestic growth.”

The development charity Oxfam has called for action to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor as it launched a new report showing that 42 people hold as much wealth as the 3.7 billion who make up the poorest half of the world’s population.

Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest one percent, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week's World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity's report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor. It found that 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017...

Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest one percent, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor. It found that 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017, while 82 percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population.

The Department of Labor has proposed a rule that would make it legal for employers to pocket their workers’ tips, as long as they pay those workers the minimum wage. We estimate that if the rule is finalized, every year workers will lose $5.8 billion in tips, as tips are shifted from workers to employers. Of the $5.8 billion, nearly 80 percent—$4.6 billion—would be taken from female tipped workers.

One of the lesser oddities of the Trump era is that the president and his party have managed to achieve historic levels of unpopularity — even as the unemployment rate has fallen to a decade low, and the stock market has soared to all-time highs. Few presidents have enjoyed such favorable, first-year macroeconomic numbers — and none have suffered such unfavorable political ones.

The new year will bring somewhat fatter paychecks to many Americans, with more than three dozen states and cities counties raising their minimum wage. The federal minimum wage remains unchanged at $7.25 per hour, where it has stayed since 2009.

The richest 0.1% of the world’s population have increased their combined wealth by as much as the poorest 50% – or 3.8 billion people – since 1980, according to a report detailing the widening gap between the very rich and poor. The World Inequality Report, published on Thursday by French economist Thomas Piketty, warned that inequality had ballooned to “extreme levels” in some countries and said the problem would only get worse unless governments took coordinated action to increase taxes and prevent tax avoidance.

Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression. I am 35 years old—the oldest millennial, the first millennial—and for a decade now, I’ve been waiting for adulthood to kick in. My rent consumes nearly half my income, I haven’t had a steady job since Pluto was a planet and my savings are dwindling faster than the ice caps the baby boomers melted.

South Korea is to write-off the debts of as many as 1.6 million people in a move designed to ease the financial burden on low-income individuals. The scheme is open to certain Koreans who have struggled to repay debts of less than 10m won ($9,128; £6,826). Eligible people can apply to the government for debt relief from next February.

Anti-poverty advocates on Tuesday implored world leaders to combat the massive wealth gap described in the annual Global Wealth Report released by Credit Suisse, which showed that the world's richest one percent own just over half of the global wealth. "This report highlights the huge gulf between the haves and the have nots—the world's richest one percent own more than everyone else combined while the poorest half of the population share less than a penny of every...

The globe’s richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, according to a new report highlighting the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else. The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn (£106tn), according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report published on Tuesday.

The number of billionaires worldwide rose above 1,500 last year, a 10 percent jump from 2015, due largely to a surge in Asia, Swiss banking giant UBS and auditors PwC said Thursday. In an annual report, UBS and PwC said that last year marked the first time it recorded more billionaires in Asia (637) than in the United States (563), crediting the rise of China's entrepreneurs. Europe took third spot in the report's billionaire database with 342.