Wage

While the vaunted rivalry between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte will continue to play out as the Olympic qualifying trials continue in Omaha, on Monday night, it was Lochte's turn in the spotlight. He won the 400-meter individual medley, although Phelps as the second place finisher also goes to London in the event. And, in fact, Phelps got a first, which he said is one of his motivations as he tries for one more Olympics: He became the first American male swimmer to qualify for four Olympics.

They're facing high unemployment, depressed wages and loads of debt — and they're only in their 20s. Welcome to life after college. Though the labor market is recovering slowly, graduates this spring have only slightly better chances of landing jobs than grads did in the depths of the recession, experts say. Over the last year, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent for college graduates under age 25. Meanwhile, researchers at the Washington-based Economic...

A new report being released today calls on the Baltimore region to rethink economic development, pointing to a worrying trend: a mounting share of low-wage jobs shutting more and more residents out of the middle class. The number of jobs in largely low-paying industries such as retail and food service grew more than 60 percent in the region between 1980 and 2007, while jobs increased 36 percent in middle-wage fields and just under 10 percent in high-wage fields, according to the Brookings Institution study.

Women make considerably less money than men in Maryland: 83 cents to the dollar, according to a study released last week. Windsor Mill resident Alison Assanah-Carroll was not surprised by the finding from the National Partnership for Women & Families, which showed that nearly a half-century after the federal Equal Pay Act was enacted, women are still paid less than men, not only in Maryland but nationwide. "It's not just a grave disparity, it's a travesty," said Assanah-Carroll, a former assistant regional census manager, who said that she earned less than her male counterparts even though she had better educational credentials and, in some cases, more experience.

Aspirins and short skirts and contraception, oh my! The last few weeks have seen a slew of Republican gaffes concerning women's sexuality. From Rick Santorum's billionaire supporter Foster Friess' waxing nostalgic about the good old days when women put aspirin "between their knees" in lieu of contraception to an online furor over whether the young conservative women at CPAC dressed too provocatively, the Republicans have a major woman problem on...

Costs for Carroll County families have risen more quickly than wages over the past decade, making self-sufficiency harder to achieve, according to a new study. A Carroll County family of one adult, a preschooler and a school-aged child needs $58,463 a year to cover basic costs, including housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and taxes, the study, titled the Self-Sufficiency Standard for Maryland, found. The standard was created by researchers at the University of Washington School of Social Work, in cooperation with the Maryland Community Action Partnership.

A family of three in Baltimore County needs about $62,000 just to make ends meet, a new report shows. And, without government assistance, minimum wage barely gets them a quarter of the way there. In Baltimore City, that same family of an adult with a preschooler and a school-age child needs nearly $50,000, the report said, for a bare-bones budget. The 2012 Self-Sufficiency Standard, scheduled to be released in Annapolis on Thursday morning, calculates the cost of living for Maryland families based on prices of such necessities as housing, food, transportation and child care.

Reports of wage cuts, social clubs, equipment and dam problems, temperance meetings and more are part of the historical events Laurel Mill superintendent George H. Nye documented during his nine years in Laurel between 1877-1885. The Laurel Historical Society will offer a glimpse into the past through Nye's eyes at "The Diaries of George Nye: An Inside Look 1877-1885," Thursday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Laurel Municipal Pool meeting room, Ninth and Main streets. Ken Skrivseth, who with Jeri Witt has begun detailed transcriptions of Nye's daily entries, will discuss some of their discoveries and what it has taken to ensure accurate transcriptions of the hand-written documents.

Last Tuesday, a Delaware state senate committee approved legislation to raise that state's minimum wage to $8.25 by 2014, making it $1 above the federal government's (and Maryland's) current standard. If the measure becomes law, the Diamond State would join 17 other states that require a minimum wage in excess of the $7.25 federal standard. That Delaware, a state ranked in the top-quarter of states for its business tax climate (according to the Tax Foundation), should demonstrate such interest in raising the minimum wage adds to the evidence that it's not strictly a red or blue state or liberal versus conservative issue.

All good: About 200,000 more jobs added in December, the lowest monthly unemployment rate (8.5 percent) in nearly three years, a front-page declaration that the economy has "gained steam" and the assertion by some employers that "the worst is over. " The most noteworthy job gains were in transportation and warehousing, retail, manufacturing, health care and mining, according to the Department of Labor. All good: Except you have to wonder how much these new jobs pay and what kind of benefits they provide.