The historic UPS deal 📦

Hey there! Last Thursday was Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. July 27 symbolizes the additional seven months Black women would need to work this year to match what their white male peers made last year (Black women earn 67 cents to a white man’s dollar). And this is why we’re so committed to closing pay gaps.

 1   UPS reaches tentative deal with strikers 📦

That was a close one. UPS and its 340,000-person Teamsters union reached a tentative deal after weeks of tense negotiations, averting a strike that would’ve pretty much crippled U.S. supply chains.

Teamsters called the agreement “historic.” It includes:

➜ Equipping more trucks with air conditioning

➜ UPS creating 7,500 full-time jobs and filling 22,500 open positions

➜ Increasing starting pay for part-time workers from $16.20 to $21 per hour

➜ Adding a $2.75 hourly increase for union workers in 2023 and a $7.50 hourly increase by the end of a five-year contract

UPS-ers will vote on the new agreement starting August 3. We’ll keep you posted on how it pans out.

 2   The gender pay gap gets smaller 🤏

We’re getting closer. The pay gap between full-time working women and men is the smallest it's been since the government began collecting pay data in 1979, per an Axios analysis of new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 🎉 

FYI: Full-time working women brought home an average weekly wage of $1,001 last quarter. That’s 84% of the $1,185 median for men (in 1979, women made just 62% of what men made).

So, why the shift? A hot job market, the increase of skill-based hiring, fewer degree requirements, improved access to child care, and the boom of pay transparency laws (we 💚 to see it), just to name a few reasons.

 3   Wait, this NPC content creator makes how much?! 🙇‍♀️

Today in Wild Jobs: The NPC streamer PinkyDoll earns $7,000 a day. The creator (whose real name is Fedha Sinon) became a social media sensation after her eccentric video streams went viral.

If you have no idea what NPC streaming is: It’s a live performance of a “non-playable character” you’d find in a video game (e.g. the pedestrians of Grand Theft Auto). During live streams, viewers purchase and send digital gifts like ice cream cones, flowers, and dinosaurs that translate to a cash payment for PinkyDoll. 💰

Would you try your hand at NPC streaming?

The STS Salary Database is Here!

Do you wish your market research looked like this?

Thanks to the launch of our website last week, now it can! Check out our new and improved Salary Database to explore hundreds of individual salaries with contextual information to help you learn your market rate.

Want to help strengthen our database and share your salary anonymously?

Submit yours here.

Coming to you live from the Beaver State. 🦫 The STS team hit the streets of Oregon to interview Oregonians about what they do and what they’re making. This video is jam-packed with some fascinating stories…

➜ A candy scientist (hello, new dream job) earning $75,000 testing sweets

➜ A nail artist (and mom) earning $7K a month from seeing 3–4 clients a day

➜ A café owner who’s been running her shop for 17 years and makes $3K monthly

You can watch these interviews (and dozens of others!) in our video here.

• “Quiet quitting.” “Lazy girl job.” “Bare minimum Mondays.” How corporate buzzwords are changing our stance on work.

• When’s the last time you checked on your old 401(k)s? If that question made you 😳, you need to check out Capitalize.*

• Washington, D.C., is considering requiring salary ranges in job posts and we’re all for it—with just one caveat. Check out our quote in the article!

• We 💚 WFH, but it’s not always the right option for everybody. Here’s why.

• This tech worker posted her previous salaries on LinkedIn (she went from $28K to $158K!) but wouldn’t recommend doing the same.

*This is sponsored advertising content.

Thanks for reading!

In other ridiculous news: Despite this July being the hottest month in 100,000 years, bosses are still against employees wearing shorts to the office. The return-to-office shorts debate was not on our bingo cards for 2023, but hey—here we are. 🩳

See you next Tuesday!