How much are you worth? / Koliko vrijedite?

When you talk to a potential employer at a job interview, one of the most important issues that comes up is the amount of money you will be making at your job. But did you know that there are several words commonly used to denote monetary compensation people receive to do a job? Pay is the most general word and it refers to the total amount of money that a company pays for work or services performed, regardless of whether it’s paid to full-time, part-time employees, or contractors.

A paycheck is a bank check given as salary or wages. Also, paycheck is often used figuratively to denote the amount of money you made. For example, you could say: Even if you’re doing all you can to save money, you can stretch your paycheck only so far. On the other hand, a wage (or more commonly wages) is a payment for labor or services to a worker, especially remuneration on an hourly or daily basis, or by the piece. In other words, if you hire workers to do a particular number of hours of work, or produce a number of items, then you pay them wages. Most often, wages are paid for manual labor, and not for professional services.

It is also useful to know that minimum wage is the lowest wage payable to employees in general (so it includes wages and salaries), and it is determined by law or by union agreement. The most common compensation for work is a salary, a fixed amount periodically paid to a person for regular work or services. Usually a salary is paid monthly, although in some cases it can be paid biweekly.

Finally, in case you hire a professional to do some work or perform a service for you, they usually charge a fee. For example, lawyers in private offices can have a regular salary, but what they charge you for their services is called a fee. Similarly, if your company hires a consultant to resolve a particular issue, then the company pays consultant’s fees. In this case the fees usually cover all consultant’s expenses, and not only the money the consultant earns for him or herself.

In summary, a company’s pay roll is a list of employees receiving wages or salaries with amounts due to each. Wages are primarily paid to workers on hourly or daily basis, and a salary is a fixed amount that does not depend on the number of hours employees worked or the number of items they produced, and it is paid monthly. However, the term average wage refers to the average earnings in, for example, a company, or a country, although it covers both salaries and wages. Finally, if you hire a professional, like a lawyer, or a consultant, their compensation is called a fee, while remuneration is general and very formal word referring to all sorts of monetary compensation you receive for your work including base salary, fees, bonus and commission earnings as well as the benefit of a company car.