Joe's Crab Shack Becomes First Major Chain To Drop Tipping

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Joe’s Crab Shack is now the first major restaurant chain to start paying workers a living wage. 

The seafood chain will experiment with dropping tipped-wages in 18 of its stores, the head of its parent company said.

"Servers, hosts, bartenders are paid now higher, fixed, hourly wages," Ignite CEO Ray Blanchette said, according to CNBC. "It's expected to result in an improved team atmosphere, a significant reduction in turnover and greater financial security for the employees."

Employees who were once paid around $2 an hour plus tips will now be paid at least $12 an hour, Blanchette said. Experienced staff stand to make even more.

According to Restaurant Business, the company actually began rolling out the policy in August but only announced the change in a call with investors last week. 

The move follows famed New York restauranteur Danny Meyer's announcement last month that all of his eateries were getting rid of tipping. Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is also experimenting with the policy.

The Trucking Industry Is Struggling, But Maybe Not For Long

Trucking, the backbone of American commerce, is in a tough spot.

There might be a future, a very long time from now, when long-haul drivers are replaced by fully self-driving vehicles. But today, trucking has the opposite problem. It's looking at a significant shortage of drivers -- 48,000 open positions in an industry of 800,000 -- and trying to figure out how it will fill that hole.

Is trucking in crisis or is the pendulum about to swing the other way? 

The industry accounts for more than two-thirds of the freight tonnage moved throughout the country in any given year (the rest is moved by rail and air) and more than 80 percent of freight transportation revenues, according to Bob Costello, the chief economist at the American Trucking Association, a trade group for the industry. But despite its importance, it poses a perennial problem: It's a difficult job to do.  

A long-haul driver without much experience has years ahead of him (it's almost always a him) without much control over his schedule. He might be on the road for days or weeks at a time, with designated places he is allowed to refuel and restrictions on the routes he can take. He'll get paid decently for a guy without a college degree, but not great, probably somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000 a year, maybe a little more. (That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The industry says it's higher.) His pay could go up to $55,000 - $60,000, if he makes it in the industry. But he'll have to keep driving, through rain and snow and sleet, for a few years before that happens.

Pay in the industry tracks pretty closely with inflation. The fact that pay has grown below inflation for the last few years -- meaning drivers are seeing pay cuts in terms of what they can buy, if not in their salary itself -- is a fairly easy explanation for why there's a shortage of drivers today.

But things may be changing. Since late 2013, long-haul truckers' average pay has increased 17 percent, according to National Transportation Institute numbers reported by the Wall Street Journal. By contrast, wages in the U.S. overall "rose by less than 4% over the same period," notes WSJ. 

Higher pay will likely plug the industry's driver shortage, for now. But turnover may continue to be a problem. It's hard to be a hiring manager at a trucking business. 

The long-haul industry is what an economist would call nearly perfectly competitive. It's fairly easy to start a company -- you just need a truck and a driver -- so any move that a company makes that doesn't fit with market conditions means that that company's business can quickly and easily go elsewhere. 

Traditionally, driver turnover in the industry is very high, and in recent years has been  between 90 and 100 percent, if not higher. That means for nearly every new recruit who gets his commercial driver's license, someone else quits. 

In addition, it's illegal for people under 21 to drive a truck commercially across state lines. That makes sense: Younger people are worse at driving and tend to make more reckless decisions behind the wheel. But practically, it presents a recruiting problem for the industry. It's such a problem that the industry is trying to lobby Congress to change the rule and allow 18-year-olds to drive trucks across state lines. 

"We miss out on the folks that are coming out of high school who don’t go to the military," said Costello. "They can’t sit around to wait [to turn 21]." Instead, they go out and get different kinds of jobs, and don't turn to trucking as a potential career until much later. At training centers, companies mostly see guys in their mid-30s, said Costello.

"It's not clear where the new truck drivers are coming from as baby boomers age out," said Stephen Burks, an economist who studies the trucking industry at the University of Minnesota Morris.

About 70 percent of long-haul trucking is done on a contract basis, according to Burks. The contracts can last a year or longer, meaning companies agree to a set price for trucking for long periods, during which time plenty of things can change in the economy. This means that trucking companies can have trouble reacting to economic forces quickly because their prices are set so far in advance. That can lead to driver shortages in the short term.

An upcoming paper that Burks will publish with Kristen Monaco at the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that "[w]hile the business problem facing [long-haul] firm managers gets more difficult to solve when freight demand increases, over time wages rise and the turnover rate comes back down."

Trucking's current shortage might end up being a lag in the market, rather than a true scarcity of available drivers -- although a company trying to figure out how to get more drivers on the road may not care about the distinction. But, Burks says, that's the nature of the industry. "It’s not like you could choose a different business model."  

In other words, trucking is tough but the challenges are predictable. When pay rises, driver shortages disappear. Eventually, though, pay stagnates and the cycle starts up again.

More Proof The Gender Pay Gap Is Enormous

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There's a new report out on the gender pay gap, and things aren't looking any better for women looking to make a buck in America.

The report, from PayScale, shows that women make 74 cents to a man's dollar in this country. That's even worse than official government data, which show that women make 78 cents for every dollar that men make.

PayScale is a website where people log on and share their salaries to make comparisons -- a service that's particularly important for women, who need to know if they are being underpaid if they have any hope of correcting it. The data come from 1.4 million users who said they are full-time employees of a company. It likely skews slightly toward younger, salaried workers who are fairly heavy Internet users.

Not only do women make less each year, but they start making less at the beginning of their careers and see their salaries plateau much earlier, meaning their lifetime earnings are much, much lower than their male counterparts'.

This chart shows median salaries in an age range for both sexes. Men start out with slightly higher salaries, but not by much. They both grow similarly in the first decade of working, but then women's salaries start to flatten out in their early 30s in a way that men's don't until age 45.

Most of the numbers above are uncontrolled numbers, meaning it's the pay gap when you look at straight salaries without factoring in things like job type, years of experience or college major (which is a big one!) When you control for those factors, the gap shrinks a lot -- but not entirely. The controlled pay gap is still 2.7 percent in favor of men, according to PayScale -- meaning women make a little over 97 cents for every dollar a man makes. Further, the factors one needs to control for, like whether the person is in a management position, are in themselves telling of where the systemic biases are in American workplaces.

The message here is pretty clear: time to give women a promotion and a raise.

5 Best Cities To Live In

This story was originally published on 24/7 Wall St. 

Moving within the United States from one city to another is much more common today. No matter the reasons for the move — buying a house, looking for a new job, leaving home for the first time — it remains a major undertaking. A host of factors play an important role in the decision where to move, including the quality of schools, the strength of the local economy and job market, safety, culture, and even climate. Americans facing this decision have much to consider.

To determine America’s best cities to live in, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on the 550 U.S. cities with populations of 65,000 or more as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau. Based on a range of variables, including crime rates, employment growth, access to restaurants and attractions, educational attainment, and housing affordability, 24/7 Wall St. identified America’s 50 Best Cities to Live.

Click here to see the 50 best cities to live.

Click here to see our methodology.

According to Elise Gould, senior economist with nonprofit think tank the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “most people move because of jobs.” Indeed, for many families on the move, the prospect of obtaining a job is often the most important — if not the only — consideration. For this reason, 24/7 Wall St. weighed this factor heavily when identifying the best places to live.

Of the 50 best cities to live, 41 have unemployment rates below the national rate, and all but five have had faster recent job growth than the national job growth rate. Incomes in these cities, when adjusted for cost of living, exceed the national household income of $53,657 in the vast majority of cases.

The affordability of housing was another key measure in our assessment of U.S. cities. The median home value in all but nine of the 50 cities exceeds the value of a typical American home of $181,200. Since housing prices are often tied to local and statewide market forces, a particular city’s home value was more often compared to statewide home prices. In all but a handful of the best cities to live, the city’s median home value was greater than the comparable state figure. In six of the 50 cities, a typical home was valued more than double the statewide value.

The ability to live safely in a given area is also a top priority for American families on the move. The violent crime rate, therefore, was another key measure when determining the best cities to live. Because violent crime rates tend to correlate with other measures of livability, these cities tend to have very low crime. The violent crime rate in the vast majority of the best cities to live is less than half the national violent crime rate of 365 per 100,000 residents.

Population growth was not part of our assessment of cities, but we excluded cities with negative population growth from our analysis. The most desirable cities to live in tended to have above-average population growths in the last decade.

As Gould observed, designing a singular index of this kind can be a challenge because people move to — and either grow to love or hate — a city for a variety of often-personal reasons. Indeed, while jobs are a major determining factor for a move, people often prefer to stay where they are because of other reasons. “And that could be city amenities, it could also be proximity to family and friends,” Gould said.

Many of the best cities are located near major cities, as this proximity provides residents with access to good schools while living in safe neighborhoods. It also allows them to enjoy the amenities available in the nearby larger cities.

Perhaps surprisingly, none of America’s largest cities are on this list. There is no New York, Los Angeles, or Houston among the best places to live. Nearly all of the biggest cities in the country by population had crime rates that automatically excluded them from consideration. Additionally, the largest cities tend to have higher poverty rates, making them less likely to qualify.

• 5
  Eagan, Minnesota > Population: 66,087
  > Median home value: $243,200
  > Poverty rate: 7.9%
  > Pct. with at least a bachelor’s degree: 52.1%
  > Amenities per 100,000 residents: 186.1
  
  
  With a population of just over 66,000, Eagan is not an especially large city. However, located just across the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Eagan residents do not have to travel more than 20 miles to access a major metropolitan area. Also, unlike the Twin Cities, Eagan is one of the safest cities in the country. Only 24 violent crimes were reported in 2014 making Eagan home to the sixth lowest violent crime rate of any city in the country. One possible explanation for the low violent crime rate may be the city’s low unemployment rate. Only 3.3% of Eagan’s workforce is out of a job, a lower unemployment rate than in all but 10 U.S. cities.
  
  While the cost of living in Eagan is roughly 2% higher than it is on average across the nation, incomes are also higher. The typical U.S. household earns $53,657 annually. The median household income in Eagan, however, is $78,884 per year, about $25,000 more than the national figure.
• 4
  Centennial, Colorado > Population: 107,193
  > Median home value: $328,800
  > Poverty rate: 4.8%
  > Pct. with at least a bachelor’s degree: 56.3%
  > Amenities per 100,000 residents: 383.4Higher educational attainment usually leads to higher incomes, and while only about 30% of American adults have a bachelor’s degree, more than half of all adults living in Centennial have a bachelor’s degree. The typical household in Centennial earns more than $91,000 annually, about $30,000 more than the typical Colorado household. The city also has a low poverty rate. Only 4.8% of Centennial residents live below the poverty line compared to a poverty rate of 12.0% in Colorado and a national rate of 15.5%. Centennial high schools also yield better results than high schools across the state. Standardized test scores are about 6% higher in the area than they are across Colorado. Growing slightly faster than the U.S. population, Centennial expanded by 6.6% over the five years through 2014 to its current level of roughly 107,000 residents.
• 3
  Johns Creek, Georgia > Population: 83,108
  > Median home value: $332,700
  > Poverty rate: 4.5%
  > Pct. with at least a bachelor’s degree: 66.9%
  > Amenities per 100,000 residents: 629.3While Georgia generally fares worse than most states in many social and economic measures, Johns Creek residents benefit from high incomes, low poverty, high levels of education, and plenty of amenities. The median annual household income in Johns Creek is nearly $100,000, roughly double the state’s median income. Also, the poverty rate of 4.5% is considerably lower than the the national poverty rate of 15.5% and even more so than the state rate of 18.3%. High levels of education among area adults partly explain the high incomes and likely improve the quality of life for the local community in a variety of other ways. Nearly 67% of adults in Johns Creek have at least a bachelor’s degree, more than twice the nationwide corresponding education attainment rate and one of the highest of any city.Johns Creek residents also have access to a remarkable number of leisure activities, especially restaurants. There are around 630 eating locations per 100,000 city residents, the second highest concentration of such amenities in the nation.
• 2
  Danbury, Connecticut > Population: 83,795
  > Median home value: $283,400
  > Poverty rate: 11.5%
  > Pct. with at least a bachelor’s degree: 33.3%
  > Amenities per 100,000 residents: 260.2The best places to live are not necessarily affordable. Danbury, the best U.S. city to live in after only Meridian, is in Fairfield County, Connecticut, one of the most expensive areas in the nation. The cost of living in the area is nearly 31% higher than the national average cost of living. Housing expenses, in particular, are very high, costing 58% more than the nationwide average cost. Households in the city, with an annual median income of $69,394, are slightly less wealthy than households across the state. A typical home in Danbury is valued at $283,400, slightly higher than Connecticut’s median home value of $267,200.For many Danbury residents, however, the high standard of living may be worth the high cost. Leisure activities are easy to come by in the area. There are around 10 nature parks and 57 marinas per 100,000 area residents, each some of the highest concentrations of such amenities nationwide.
• 1
  Meridian, Idaho > Population: 87,739
  > Median home value: $193,900
  > Poverty rate: 10.9%
  > Pct. with at least a bachelor’s degree: 27.7%
  > Amenities per 100,000 residents: 169.8Meridian, located just outside of Idaho’s capital city of Boise, is 24//7 Wall St.’s best city to live in. The city is safe, and jobs have attracted growing numbers of new residents. Only 80 violent crimes were reported per 100,000 in Meridian last year, a fraction of the national violent crime rate of 366 violent crimes per 100,000 Americans.The annual unemployment rate in the city is also quite low. At just 4.1%, it is lower than the state’s jobless rate of 4.8% and well below the national jobless rate of 6.2%. Moreover, jobs are being added to the local economy faster than in most of the United States. The 7.4% increase in the number of jobs from 2012 through last year was much greater than the national job growth rate of 1.8% over that period. Prospective employment is frequently the first priority for Americans considering relocation. With the strong job market, Meridian’s population has been growing dramatically in recent years. Over the five years through 2014, the city’s population growth rate of 28.0% was more than four times the nationwide population growth of 6.5%.

'Candy Crush' Maker Sold To Activision Blizzard For $5.9 Billion

Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. said it will buy "Candy Crush Saga" creator King Digital Entertainment for $5.9 billion to strengthen its games portfolio.

Activision, which owns popular game franchises such as "World of Warcraft," "Call of Duty" and "Diablo," will pay $18 in cash per King share, a premium of 16 percent to King's closing price on Monday.

The addition of King's highly-complementary business will position it as a global leader in interactive entertainment across mobile, console and PC platforms, Activision said.

"With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before," said Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick.

 

Video game publishers are shifting to the lucrative digital business from physical sales of games as consumers shift from consoles to playing on smartphones and tablets.

King, which makes games for social media platforms and mobile devices, will continue to be led as an independent operating unit by Chief Executive Riccardo Zacconi, Chief Creative Officer Sebastian Knutsson, and Chief Operating Officer Stephane Kurgan, the companies said in a statement late on Monday.

King, which went public last March, has been struggling to boost bookings, an indicator of future revenue, as new game launches are planned only toward the second half of the year.

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After Criminal Leak Case, Goldman Changes Its Revolving Door Policy

Goldman Sachs has implemented new policies restricting the work newly hired current and former government officials are allowed to do, a source at the bank familiar with the matter told The Huffington Post.  

Under the new policy, “before the formal interview process begins we would have multiple departments reviewing what post-employment restrictions the employee would be under. The process starts earlier and there are more people involved,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The source declined to specify when, under the previous policy, the review began.

The move comes after years of criticism that the bank profits from close government connections, and a recent criminal case in which an employee, himself an ex-government worker, is accused of doing just that.

The bank agreed Wednesday to pay $50 million to settle charges that a Goldman banker, who previously worked at the New York Federal Reserve for seven years, had received confidential Fed documents relating to at least one Goldman client. The case was first reported by The New York Times in November 2014. In the settlement, Goldman admitted to a failure to properly supervise and train the former Fed employee once he was hired at the bank.

The company began reviewing its internal policies shortly after the Times story.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman has been subject to specific and intense scrutiny for the revolving door between the firm and government. Most of that criticism has focused on Goldman executives leaving the bank for government roles where the key responsibilities involve direct oversight or regulation of their former employer.

Most prominently, former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin both led the bank before taking their government roles. At a less prominent but nevertheless influential level, three of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are headed by Goldman alums.

Last year, a New York Fed whistleblower released tapes documenting the regulator’s interactions with Goldman. While doing little to decrease the perception of Goldman as overly close with its regulators, the tapes were far more damaging to the New York Fed. They showed a meek watchdog, fretting about how to deliver even slight rebukes to a bank it oversees.

REI CEO Says Closing On Black Friday Is A 'Radical Idea'

REI will be sacrificing one of its top business days when it closes its 143 retail stores on Black Friday to encourage customers to spend time outside.

CEO Jerry Stritzke told HuffPost Live on Wednesday that the decision to close up shop for the day wasn't "made lightly," and admits that "it's a bit of a startling idea from a retail perspective."

"[We] certainly had to think hard about it. This is new news. I haven't spoken to very many of my contemporaries about the issue, but I'm excited by the idea," Stritzke said. "I think it's intriguing that we can create this conversation [about] something so central to our brand and kind of who we are."

This is the first time REI will close on Black Friday, even though the day after Thanksgiving has historically been a "top 10 business day" for the company, according to Stritzke. However, the company's decision exemplifies some retailers' recent opposition to keeping stores open on what is traditionally a family holiday, and the day after.

Online shoppers will still be able to purchase items from REI on Black Friday, though they'll initially be directed to a blackout screen imploring them to explore the outdoors. Online sales aren't the initiative's priority, however.

"It's easier to leave [the website] on than turning it off," Stritzke explained.

Watch Jerry Stritzke's conversation with HuffPost Live in the clip above.

Want more HuffPost Live? Stream us anytime on Go90, Verizon's mobile social entertainment network, and listen to our best interviews on iTunes.

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