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At many companies, discussing salaries is considered a taboo thats kept to whispered conversations around the water cooler or brief mentions at after-work drinks. But, according to a new study, a lack of pay transparency among peers in the workplace might be damaging employee morale. The study, authored by a group of cross-institutional business and finance professors and published in the Social Science Research Network, examined Glassdoor employee ratings of compensation satisfaction at more than 1,300 publicly traded firms. The researchers compared these ratings from before and after a 2018 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandate, which required that companies disclose the CEO pay ratioa metric that compares CEO pay to that of the median employee. Prior to this mandate, employees did not have access to an official estimate of their peers compensation. The results show that, contrary to popular belief, the conventional approach to keeping employee salaries hush-hush may actually have a damaging effect. Heres what executives need to know about the findings: Employees are already making their own assumptions According to Lisa LaViers, an assistant professor of accounting at Tulane University and co-author on the study, previous research on pay transparency started with the assumption that employees knew nothing about what others were being paid. It was also assumed that when the employees learned they were paid more than others, they would think that was fair and it wouldn’t make them any happierbut if they discovered they were paid less than others, it would make them unhappy,” she says. This theory, called the Fair Wage Effort Hypothesis, caused executives to believe that the net effect of pay transparency would be dissatisfaction among employees. However, LaViers explains, this research doesn’t apply well to a modern economy, where employees have much broader access to pay information. Employees are doing their own research, and aren’t content to stay in the dark, she says. Pay transparency increases compensation satisfaction To better understand employees’ assumptions and sentiments, the study examined about 300,000 individual compensation ratings across firms in 62 different industries both before and after the 2018 SEC mandate. It found that, when employees gained access to an idea of the median employee compensation at their firm, their own compensation satisfaction went uppointing to the fact that many employees overestimate how much their colleagues make, and having the real number actually improves their own sentiments. In general, finding out about the high rates of CEO pay makes employees mad. But the thing about our research is that employees already knew what the CEO was being paid; their anger about that was already baked into their pay satisfaction, LaViers explains. The new information being disclosed was that of the median employee. This number is much lower than CEO pay and provides a much more favorable comparison point for rank-and-file employees. Giving them this new comparison point helped put their own wages into a more favorable light. Managers should challenge their own ideas Based on these findings, the authors have a few suggestions for managers who may be operating under the preconceived idea that pay transparency is bad for business. To start, they write, managers should assume that employees are looking for compensation averages online, and they should be actively keeping an eye out to make sure that any estimates floating around are up-to-date. Whether or not you implement a policy of pay transparency, employees are developing ideas of what others in the firm are making, LaViers says, adding that many of those preconceptions are either inaccurate or inflated. It may also be helpful to use anonymous surveys in an effort to understand whether employees believe they are being underpaid compared to their peers. If those notions exist, adopting greater pay transparency could help to alleviate the tension. Unless your company is actually paying people unfairly (which is a different problem entirely!), you may benefit from implementing a policy of greater transparency, LaViers says. It will help you take control of the narrative and give employees more realistic reference points to compare their own wages to.
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E-Commerce
The first Atlantic hurricane of the year could be upon us. Right now, Tropical Storm Erin is making its way through the tropical Atlantic, where it is currently to the east of several Caribbean nations, including Dominica and St Lucia. But as the storm continues to move west-northwest towards the continental United States, it is expected to strengthen, potentially becoming a Category 4 hurricane. Heres what you need to know about the first possible Atlantic hurricane of the year, and the maps you can view to track its path. Will Tropical Storm Erin become a hurricane? Its likely Tropical Storm Erin will become a hurricane however, that outcome cannot be guaranteed. According to a recent bulletin from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, as of Friday, Erin is on track to become a hurricane. Maximum sustained winds are near 70 mph (110 km/h) with higher gusts, the bulletin states. Steady strengthening is expected during the next few days and Erin is forecast to become a hurricane later today, and it could become a major hurricane by this weekend. As of 5:00 AM AST Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center (NHC), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, cautions that heavy rain is expected across the northernmost Leeward Islands, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, as well as southern and eastern Puerto Rico. The agency says the rains may lead to isolated flash and urban flooding, along with landslides or mudslides this weekend into early next week. However, even though the storm is still growing while its moving west-northwest, the National Hurricane Center is uncertain whether Erin, even if it becomes a hurricane, will make landfall in the Caribbean or on the East Coast of the United States. Yet the agency cautions that even if Erin doesn’t make landfall, the force still poses a threat. While there is still uncertainty in what impacts might occur in portions of the Bahamas, the east coast of the United States, and Bermuda next week, the risk of dangerous surf and rip currents across the western Atlantic basin next week continues to increase, the NHC says. Use these maps to track Tropical Storm Erin Those who want to track the storms progress can do so by viewing a number of maps the National Hurricane Center regularly updates. Those maps include: The Seven-Day Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook The Tropical Storm Erin interactive map A map that shows the Earliest Reasonable Arrival Time of Tropical-Storm-Force Winds A map that displays the Coastal Watches/Warnings and Forecast Cone for Storm Center These maps are regularly updated, so if you want to track the storm throughout the weekend, you should check back on them often. Erin isnt the only hurricane to look out for If Erin does become a hurricane, it will only be the first of many that the Atlantic is expected to bear this year. In an August 7 post, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that there will be between five and nine hurricanes this season, and between two and five of those hurricanes will be major. In addition to the hurricanes, this season is expected to experience an additional 13-18 named storms. The August 7 update to NOAA's 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook calls for: 13-18 named storms, 5-9 hurricanes & 2-5 major hurricanes.Our prediction for an 'above-normal' season remains on track.PREPARE NOW.–> See our news release + downloadable infographics at: pic.twitter.com/ECCqvlrBps— NOAA (@NOAA) August 7, 2025
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E-Commerce
Shoppers spent at a healthy pace in July, particularly at the nations auto dealerships, even as President Donald Trump‘s tariffs start to take a toll on jobs and lead to some price increases. But the figures also underscore anxiety among Americans: all the uncertainty around the expansive duties appears to be pushing them to step up their purchases of furniture and other items ahead of the expected price increases, analysts said. Retail sales rose a solid 0.5% last month from the previous month, and June spending was stronger than expected, according to the Commerce Department’s report released Friday. June’s retail sales were revised upward to 0.9% from the original 0.6% increase, the agency said. The pace in July matched economists’ estimates. The increases followed two consecutive months of spending declines in April and May. Excluding auto sales, which have been volatile since Trump imposed tariffs on many foreign-made cares, retail sales rose 0.3% in July. Auto sales rose 1.6%. They appear to have returned roughly to normalized spending after a surge in March and April as Americans attempted to get ahead of Trumps 25% duty on imported cars and parts and then a slump after that, according to Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. Economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. The data showed solid spending across various stores. Business at clothing stores and online retailers saw increases. Business at home furnishings and furniture stores had strong sales gains. However, at electronics stores, sales were down. And business at restaurants, the lone services component within the Census Bureau report and a barometer of discretionary spending, also fell, as shoppers eat at home to save money. A category of sales that excludes volatile sectors such as gas, cars, and restaurants rose last month by 0.5% from the previous month. The figure feeds into the Bureau of Economic Analysiss consumption estimate and is sign that consumers are still spending on some discretionary items. Tuan Nguyen, an economist at RSM US, noted the difficulty of attributing the entire July gain to resilient American shoppers given so much uncertainty surrounding the economy and tariffs. A sizable portion of the gain likely came from rising prices of imported goods under the impact of tariffs, he said. Nguyen also noted he can’t dismiss the possibility that consumers once again pulled forward their spending ahead of the August tariff deadline, taking advantage of Amazon Prime Day sales as well as competing sales from the likes of Walmart and Target. In fact, Nguyen noted the sharp rise in furniture sales, for example, appeared to indicate shoppers were trying to get ahead of the duties. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with American households that would suggest a spending recession given that shoppers are in a strong enough financial position to accelerate purchases, he wrote. “With so much noise in the data, the rest of the year promises to be a wild and bumpy ride. Earlier this month, the Labor Department reported that U.S. hiring is slowing sharply as Trumps trade policies paralyze businesses and raise concerns about the outlook for the worlds largest economy. U.S. employers added just 73,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported, well short of the 115,000 expected. Another government report, issued Tuesday, on U.S. inflation showed that inflation was unchanged in July as rising prices for some imported goods were offset by declining gas and grocery prices, leaving overall prices modestly higher than a year ago. Consumer prices rose 2.7% in July from a year earlier, the same as the previous month and up from a post-pandemic low of 2.3% in April. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.2% in July, down from 0.3% the previous month, while core prices ticked up 0.3%, a bit faster than the 0.2% in June. The new numbers suggest that slowing rent increases and cheaper gas are offsetting some impacts of Trumps sweeping tariffs. Many businesses are also likely still absorbing much of the cost of the duties. The consumer price figures likely reflect some impact from the 10% universal tariff Trump imposed in April, as well as higher duties on countries such as China and Canada. But that may change. U.S. wholesale inflation soared unexpectedly last month, signaling that Trumps taxes are pushing costs up and that higher prices for consumers may be on the way. The Labor Department reported Thursday that its producer price index which measures inflation before it hits consumers rose 0.9% last month from June, biggest jump in more than three years. The report comes as major retailers like Walmart and Target are slated to report their fiscal second-quarter earnings reports starting next week. Analysts will study the reports to get insight into the state of consumer behavior. But they will also monitor how much stores are passing on the tariffs costs to shoppers. In May, Walmart, the nations largest retailer, warned t hat it had increased prices on bananas imported from Costa Rica from 50 cents per pound to 54 cents, but it noted that a large sting for shoppers wouldn’t start to appear until June and July. But a growing list of companies including Procter & Gamble, e.lf. Cosmetics, Black & Decker and Ralph Lauren told investors in recent weeks that they plan to or have already raised prices. Some are trying to be selective and focusing on raising prices on just their premium products as a way to offset the higher costs from tariffs. Warby Parker, which has been shifting their sourcing away from China, told analysts last Thursday that it plans to keep its $95 option. But its increasing prices on select lens types. It also wants to cater more to older shoppers who need more expensive progressive lens. Warby Parker said that progressives, trifocals and bifocals make up roughly 40% of all prescription units sold industrywide. But just 23% of Warby Parkers business now is made up of progressives, its highest priced offering and offer the highest profit margins. We were able to quickly roll out select strategic price increases that have benefited our growth, Neil Blumenthal, co-chairman and co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker, told analysts last week. Anne D’Innocenzio, AP retail writer
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E-Commerce
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