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Buy Value Stocks, Says J.P. Morgan’s David Kelly

An interview with the chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

What’s your stock market outlook for the second half?  It’s a particularly challenging year, but I’m reasonably optimistic. The major concerns this year have been about inflation, the Federal Reserve raising rates very rapidly and the possibility of recession. We don’t know about geopolitical events, whether in Ukraine or other situations that will flare up. But I think economic growth can moderate without going into recession, I think inflation can moderate, and I think the Federal Reserve will cool its tone. That should make it a reasonably positive second half for U.S. stocks.

  • SEE MORE Midyear Investing Outlook: Where to Invest Now

What’s your forecast for the economy and inflation? By the fourth quarter, I expect economic growth, adjusted for inflation, of less than 2.5% year-over-year; by the fourth quarter of next year, less than 2.0%. So I think the economy will grow, but at a much slower pace. On inflation, we expect the consumer price index to be back to 4.3% by the end of this year, 3.5% by the end of next year. Why do I think inflation is going to come down? Because there really is such a thing as transitory inflation. It was caused by the pandemic and the policy response. The pandemic is fading, and supply chains will improve. A lot of the money poured into the economy in terms of fiscal stimulus over the past two years is drying up. That money pushed up demand for a lot of goods. With less demand, inflation will naturally fade. 

Why are you convinced we’ll skirt a recession? Despite the two extraordinary recessions we’ve seen since the start of the century—the pandemic recession and the great financial crisis—I think the volatility of GDP has fallen. It’s quite difficult to get a normal recession going. There’s a huge excess demand for labor, and that momentum will keep the economy out of recession. The unemployment rate will drift down to 3.3% by the fourth quarter of this year, which will be the lowest in 70 years, and to about 3.1% by the fourth quarter of next year.

  • SEE MORE The 22 Best Stocks to Buy for 2022

Are U.S. corporate profits in good shape? It is tougher for corporations in general. It looks like operating earnings will be up about 7% to 8% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year. That’s representative of what we’ll see this year. We saw huge gains in earnings last year. Profits are extremely high, but it’s very hard to grow them from here. And companies are facing pressures. A rising dollar hurts the value of overseas earnings. Also, you’ve got rising wage costs, rising interest costs. So earnings overall will be growing more slowly. But within the market there are stocks that are cheap relative to earnings and others that are expensive. Looking at valuations is going to be much more important in the second half of this year and beyond. Investors will be a little more parsimonious about what they buy. But within the market there are plenty of opportunities.

How should investors position their portfolios? The first thing investors should do is look in the mirror. We had huge gains over the past three years. If you didn’t rebalance, the good news is that you’ve got a lot more money. The bad news is that you’re heavily overweight in large-cap growth stocks. Is that where you want to be? People have to look at how the environment has changed and make sure their portfolios are aligned appropriately in terms of risk and expected return. How much risk do you want to take?

In terms of where the opportunities are, valuations give you the answer. Value-priced stocks in general are selling at a steep discount to growth-oriented stocks. Over the past 25 years, the price-earnings ratio on value stocks has averaged 72% of that on growth stocks. Now it’s averaging 60%. People have been piling into mega-cap growth stocks. But the more sober world of 2022 and possibly 2023 will cause those valuation gaps to narrow. Similarly, international stocks in general have rarely looked as cheap as they do today compared with U.S. stocks. A lot of people are very underweight in international stocks—this is a good time to load up. You can get double the dividend yield you can get in the U.S., and you’re buying at much better valuations.

When you talk about international investing, where do you mean? Both Europe and China. Europe is cheap. It’s threatened by what’s going on in Ukraine and by high energy prices that will slow the European economy. But one silver lining to the very dark cloud of Ukraine is that it has pulled Europe together. The pandemic helped pull Europe together also. We’re seeing more common fiscal policies. In the end, Europe will get through its energy problems and get back on a path of moderate growth. European stocks are so cheap that there’s a big opportunity there. The world’s value play is European stocks. China is a different situation. China has taken a huge hit. There will be a bumpy year as China gets through its COVID vulnerability. But financial assets are long term, and China has got a lot of growth potential. Chinese stocks look very cheap relative to the rest of the world. 

  • SEE MORE The 10 Best Stocks for a Bear Market

What other pockets of opportunity do you see? Small-cap stocks could do well. They tend to do well when the economy is bouncing out of recession and do poorly when it’s threatened by recession, but I think we can avoid a recession here. Again, small-cap value looks cheap relative to small-cap growth.

What about inflation hedges—still a good strategy? The inflation threat may be receding a bit, but some exposure to commodities and parts of the real estate market is okay. And equities overall are an inflation hedge relative to fixed income or cash. A lot of people are tempted to buy Treasury inflation-protected securities. But the yield on 10-year TIPS is negative in inflation-adjusted terms. Basically, you give the government money for 10 years, and at the end they’ll give you less purchasing power—not a great deal.

What’s ahead for fixed-income investors? People can feel more comfortable investing in fixed income than they could at the start of the year. Then, we had a 10-year Treasury yield of 1.5%; now, we’re closer to 3%. That gives you a better stream of income. And the Federal reserve is going to turn less hawkish over the next few months, reducing the risk of a big sell-off in bonds. I would still underweight fixed income relative to stocks, but I’d only have a slight underweight rather than a significant underweight, which is what I’d have had at the start of 2022.

Anything to add? I would emphasize to investors to think carefully about the actual value of the company or the assets you’re buying. We’ve had years in which meme stocks have done well, cryptocurrencies have done well. There’s a lot of excitement in these spaces. But in the end, there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the crypto space. To be honest, I think it’s mostly nonsense. It’s important for people to invest in companies that have a real product, a real good, a real service, a real cash flow being generated. That’s how you build a portfolio for the long run. The last few years have been great for fads. I don’t think the next few years will be.

Don’t Move to Another State Just to Reduce Your Taxes

We know lots of friends who are considering moving from a high-tax state, such as New York, to a state with low or no state income taxes. They think they will end up with more money, although they are torn because they may also be moving away from family and friends just to escape state taxes.

  • SEE MORE 5 Things to Do Before You Retire

What I advise them to do is think about spendable income — the amount they’ll have to spend after taxes — and not just low or zero tax rates. If you have more money to spend after paying the tax bill wherever you currently live, you might as well stay where you are, if it’s closer to the grandkids. You may be able to pay for at least one warm-weather winter trip, too.

Design a Smarter Retirement Income Plan

Before making life decisions about moving (or downsizing, purchasing insurance, etc.) retirees ought to know their number for their total starting income, and have a plan for retirement income that includes a projection of income and savings, and all planning assumptions.

The income plan ought to cover:

  • Starting income
  • Inflation protection
  • Beneficiary income protection
  • Spousal income (if applicable)
  • Plan management (when plan assumptions are not realized)
  • Market risk to plan (when markets fluctuate)
  • Legacy passed on to beneficiaries or heirs

All these subjects are covered in articles on Kiplinger.com. In one article, How to Generate an Extra $20,000 a Year in Retirement, we examined the income from our favorite investor (a 70-year-old woman with $2 million of savings, of which 50% is in a rollover IRA). We saw a large before-tax income advantage from Income Allocation planning. Even if she invests a portion of that to meet her legacy objective, she still has a $20,000 advantage in spendable annual income.

The question is whether she gives back that advantage in federal and state income taxes in her home state of New York.

Reducing your Combined Federal/State Retirement Tax %

You may have heard that New York is a high-tax state, and that’s true. It ranks No. 5 on Kiplinger’s list of the 10 least tax-friendly states for middle-class families. 

Importantly, most states exclude Social Security income from taxation, as well as a portion of IRA distributions and employer pension plans. Together with interest on state and local bonds that is not taxed, a retiree has a head start in reducing state income taxes. 

  • SEE MORE 2 Alternatives to Required Minimum Distributions

But the question remains how much of that advantage is eaten up in New York state income taxes. The key for our Go2Income planning is that annuity payments are treated the same in both the New York and federal tax returns, meaning the tax benefits carry over. And with some of the adjustments at the state level mentioned above, the favorable tax treatment of annuity payments may be even more valuable.

Let me share with you the high-level elements of our 70-year-old investor’s federal and New York state tax filing.

   

Courtesy of Jerry Golden

Benefits and Cost from this Planning

For our investor the income taxed by New York would be around $67,500 — or about 40% of her total gross income. As a percentage of total income, the state income tax is a little more than 2%. Even after adding federal taxes, her Retirement Tax Rate is less than 15%. That leaves her a big advantage in spendable income. A traditional plan without annuity payments and with lower income actually pays more in total taxes — with a combined tax rate of over 18%.

So, our plan produces more cash flow from savings, much of it tax-favored, and gives our retiree the freedom to live where she prefers.

And the cost? The primary one is that annuity payments don’t continue at your passing even before the premium has been recovered. 

You can elect a beneficiary protection feature that makes sure total annuity payments will equal the premium at a minimum. However, that choice will reduce the level of guaranteed annuity payments and some of the tax benefits. Or you can use the higher annuity payments to purchase some life insurance. And those planning choices aren’t the only options you will have in terms of beneficiary protection. 

What if the lure of zero state income taxes is too great? Our retiree could move to Florida, save the $3,500 in New York taxes, adopt a Go2Income plan for her circumstances — and pay for the kids’ trips to visit her.

So be with the kids, live where you want and possibly leave less at your passing if it’s early in retirement. Bottom line: Don’t follow the crowd. Do your own research. And rely on resources at Kiplinger.

At Go2Income, we can provide you with a complimentary personalized plan that delivers both a high starting income and growing lifetime income, as well as long-term savings. 

  • SEE MORE Choppy Market Impacting Your Retirement Income Plan?

What Older Adults Should Know about Getting Divorced and (Maybe) Remarried

My Great Aunt Gert was widowed after being happily married to the same husband – my Great Uncle Bob – for more than 50 years. She remarried at age 83 to a man, my Great Uncle John, who was 85. They had 10 good years together before he died at the ripe old age of 95. Their “gray marriage” was a rarity 30 years ago.

So was gray divorce – but it’s on the rise today. Not everyone has the happy ending Gert had. She had one long, happy marriage followed by another.

  • SEE MORE Emerging Financially Healthy After a Gray Divorce

In the last five years, I have seen more long-term marriages end than ever before. It’s actually a global phenomenon. Most divorces still happen to couples in their 30s and 40s, but more couples in their 50s and 60s – who have been married for 25 years and up – are deciding to split these days.

Their concerns are different than younger couples who divorce. In a more typical divorce, the partners are concerned with the young kids – assuming there are any – being OK. In gray divorce, partners have often accumulated more substantial assets, so there’s more to be divided. There are older kids, possibly grandchildren. There are more stakeholders.

Sometimes, it’s becoming an empty nester that’s the impetus for the split. The kids are 18 or over and gone. And the couple find they’ve grown apart. Sometimes it’s the children who – maybe even unwittingly – have kept their parents together.

No matter what age the kids are, they still need to be taken into consideration. If they’re in college, the soon-to-be-exes must figure out if college tuition and expenses will be split and if so, how. When the grown children get married, will Mom and Dad still fund the wedding or a portion of it? How?

  • SEE MORE In a Divorce, What Is Marital Property vs. Separate Property?

If there are grandchildren, the uncoupling couple may be paying for private school tuition, summer camps, music lessons. Will Grandma and Grandpa keep paying for those things? And if so, how will those expenses be paid?

In gray divorces, there can be a lot of intertwined interests that have to be unraveled and divided. Vacation homes. Rental property. A family business. Family foundations. I know former couples who continue to operate as business partners or jointly oversee a foundation and its assets. Still others continue to share vacation homes. Just not at the same time – unless it’s an unusually amicable split.

For anyone considering getting out of a long-term marriage, here are a few points to keep in mind.

Divide and conquer

Have you and your soon-to-be-ex shared the same financial planner and estate planning attorney? Probably. Now, you each must have your own set of advisers. It’s cleaner and easier for one spouse to stick with the existing advisors – and for one spouse to get new ones. Plus, ethically speaking an adviser can’t serve each of you.

So, maybe Spouse A keeps the existing attorney and finds a new financial planner, while Spouse B keeps the existing financial planner and finds a new attorney. Each person gets to keep one provider who has the historical perspective. Or maybe one of you wants a fresh start all around, and that works too.

Consolidate and conquer

If the couple are retired, they have likely already consolidated their nest egg, which makes divorce and splitting up assets easier. If they haven’t done this yet, doing so will again make it easier. Move it all over to one financial institution. That makes it a lot easier to track and a lot less stressful.

If the couple haven’t done that yet, it can be part of the negotiations. For smaller accounts – however you determine “smaller” –  close them out and move them to bigger accounts.

When the daughter (or son) says ‘I do’

Who will pay for the wedding(s) of your child or children? That’s often part of divorce negotiations.

It’s cleaner to get this settled at the time of the uncoupling, rather than waiting until much later.

Heir(s) apparent

Any previous estate planning documents that left everything to the surviving spouse may need to be updated with a new beneficiary or beneficiaries. If I’m the adult child of divorcing parents, it’s clear to me that whatever my inheritance originally was going to be, it may now be diluted. Especially if I have siblings.

Talk to your adult child or children about any provisions you’re making. Let them know their needs and interests are being factored in to the agreement.  

Who has the power?

Splitting spouses were probably each other’s power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney. Now what? The responsibility – for one or both parents – may now go to an adult child. These are conversations you’ll need to have at the time of the split.

Who has the (Social) Security?

There is a maze of laws surrounding Social Security (yes, you can collect Social Security from an ex-spouse) and remarriage. Make sure you know them. For example, your 60th birthday is crucial. Get married one day before you turn 60, and you could lose benefits you were entitled to – or may have even already been receiving.

Saying ‘I do’ (again)

If you get remarried, you will want prenups. A prenup gives you – and your adult children and grandchildren – some measure of security. It also reduces any risk of – it must be said – fraud. You’ll also want to update any health insurance and life insurance policies. You may again need to update your power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney – just as you did when you divorced, this time appointing your new spouse.

When you get married, there are a lot of inherent and invisible rights. And responsibilities. You may want to spell out – legally – that your children are not financially responsible for their stepmother or stepfather, should she or he require long-term hospitalization or in-home healthcare. This is where estate planning and financial planning come into play, as well.

Great Aunt Gert, who died in 2018, got lucky. Don’t leave your nest egg or your children’s and grandchildren’s futures to fate. Plan ahead, and have peace of mind.

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Stock Market Today: Wall Street Rallies Around Reassuring Retail Data

The stock market enjoyed a broad rebound Tuesday as fresh economic data suggested the U.S. consumer is still shopping strong.

The U.S. Census Bureau said today that April retail sales improved by 0.9% over March. Though that was slightly less than the 1.0% expected, there was a show of strength in the significant upward revision to March’s numbers, to 1.4% growth from 0.5% originally.

  • SEE MORE The 22 Best Stocks to Buy for 2022

“To the extent that markets are worried about a growth slowdown, this is good news, but it is also a further catalyst for the Fed to raise rates even higher to get inflation under control,” says Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for registered investment advisor Independent Advisor Alliance.

While Zaccarelli joins other names in believing a recession is unlikely in 2022, “the Fed is going to need to raise interest rates to a point where they are likely to cause a recession in 2023 or 2024, and that gives us cause for concern,” he says.

Despite the promising retail data, success in retail stocks wasn’t a gimme.

Walmart (WMT, -11.4%) plunged after delivering a mixed quarterly report. Revenues improved 2.4% year-over-year to $141.6 billion to easily top expectations, and Walmart lifted its full-year sales outlook. However, that windfall is coming from cost-conscious consumers flocking to its grocery aisle, which has lower margins than its other offerings. This, as well as supply-chain problems and other headwinds, caused Walmart to report profits of $1.30 per share that were well short of estimates, and to lower its income forecast for 2022.

Home Depot (HD, +1.7%) fared better, however, after delivering record fiscal first-quarter sales and upgrading its full-year outlook. 

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“Walmart’s report this week basically confirmed all the negative scenarios that you would expect given inflationary pressures and rising interest rates,” says David Keller, chief market strategist at StockCharts.com. But he added that “Home Depot’s report had a much more encouraging tone as consumers fueled a strong earnings win for the company.”

  • SEE MORE 37 Ways to Earn Up to 9% Yields on Your Money

Other pockets of strength Tuesday included airline stocks such as American Airlines (AAL, +7.7%) and Delta Air Lines (DAL, +6.7%), which were boosted by United Airlines’ (UAL, +7.9%) higher second-quarter revenue outlook. Semiconductor stocks including Micron Technology (MU, +5.7%) and Qualcomm (QCOM, +4.3%) also rallied around Piper Sandler’s upgrade of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, +8.7%).

The Nasdaq Composite was tops among the major indexes Tuesday, up 2.8% to 11,984. The S&P 500 delivered a 2.0% gain to 4,088, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average improved 1.3% to 32,654.

YCharts

Other news in the stock market today:

  • The small-cap Russell 2000 surged 3.2% to 1,840.
  • U.S. crude oil futures slumped 1.6% to $112.40 per barrel.
  • A retreat in the U.S. dollar helped gold futures tick 0.3% higher to $1,818.90 per ounce.
  • Bitcoin improved by 1.7% to $30,058.48. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m.)
  • Twitter (TWTR, +2.5%) made some gains despite a potential deal with Tesla (TSLA, +5.1%) CEO Elon Musk looking increasingly unlikely. Musk insisted today that he would back out of his $44 billion bid to buy the social platform unless Twitter proved that fewer than 5% of its users are bots. He tweeted that “20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher” without providing proof. Numerous analysts have now said they believe Musk’s sudden interest in Twitter’s bot numbers is either an attempt to escape his deal, or lower the $54.20-per-share price tag.

Buffett’s Latest Buys Are In!

A number of other stocks were driven higher Tuesday by their newfound inclusion into a prestigious order: the equity portfolio of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

  • SEE MORE The 15 Best Value Stocks to Buy Right Now

Berkshire filed its quarterly Form 13F with the SEC yesterday afternoon, revealing that after more than a year of heavy selling, Warren Buffett was finally eager to buy. Paramount Global (PARA, +15.4%) and Celanese (CE, +7.5%) were just two of the eight new positions Berkshire entered during the first quarter, and among the top beneficiaries of earning Buffett’s seal of approval.

We recently mentioned that inflation has been a major driver of many of Buffett’s purchases of the past few months, but it’s not the only story.

Read on as we explore each and every one of Buffett’s 22 moves from the first quarter of 2022, including what likely drew the Oracle of Omaha (or his lieutenants) to the position.

Kyle Woodley was long AMD as of this writing.

  • SEE MORE 2022’s Best Mutual Funds in 401(k) Retirement Plans

No Tax for Donating Leave to Ukraine Victims

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a worldwide outpouring of support for victims of the war. And aide to those suffering is not just coming from other nations. Ordinary citizens from around the world are helping, too. They’re showing up in neighboring countries to help refugees, sending care packages, donating to relief organizations, giving blood, and more.

  • SEE MORE 140 Companies That Have Pulled Out of Russia

In the U.S., some companies are facilitating this effort by setting up leave-based donation programs. Under these programs, workers can give up their vacation, sick, or personal leave in exchange for having their employer make a cash donation to a charitable organization tied to Ukrainian relief efforts. However, one of the questions workers may have about participating a leave-based donation program is whether their donation will be treated as taxable income on their W-2 form.

Fortunately, the IRS has cleared up this concern for leave-based programs set up to help victims of the war in Ukraine. According to the tax agency, payments made by an employer under such a leave-based donation program before January 1, 2023, won’t be treated as gross income, wages, or compensation of their workers. As a result, employees who elect to forgo leave under a leave-based donation program to help Ukrainian war victims won’t be treated as having constructively received gross income, wages, or compensation. That also means an employer shouldn’t include the payments it makes to a charity under the program in Box 1, 3, or 5 of its electing employees’ W-2 forms.

However, to prevent “double dipping,” workers who participate in a leave-based donation program can’t claim a charitable contribution deduction on their 2022 tax return for the value of their forgone leave. On the other hand, the employer may be able to deduct its payments to charity if it otherwise meets the requirements for a charitable deduction.

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The 10 Best Stocks for a Bear Market

Bear markets are an inevitable if particularly unpleasant part of the market cycle. But investors who hold the best stocks to buy for bear markets can mitigate at least some of the damage.

No, the S&P 500 isn’t in a bear market – a 20% decline from its peak – just yet. It has, however, been flirting with one for some time. The Nasdaq Composite, for its part, fell into a bear market a while ago. 

Either way, 2022 has been a dismal year for equities with no clear end in sight. Bottoms are hard to call in real time anyway, and, besides, stocks can trade sideways for as long as they feel like it. 

  • SEE MORE The 22 Best Stocks to Buy for 2022

And so if this is how things are going to continue, investors might want to arm themselves with the best stocks they can find. And right now, those stock picks should focus on resiliency during deep downturns.

The best bear market stocks tend to be found in defensive sectors, such as consumer staples, utilities, healthcare and even some real estate equities. Furthermore, companies with long histories of dividend growth can offer ballast when seemingly everything is selling off. And, of course, low-volatility stocks with relatively low correlations to the broader market often hold up better in down markets.

To find the best stocks to buy for bear markets, we screened the S&P 500 for stocks with the highest conviction consensus Buy recommendations from Wall Street industry analysts. We further limited ourselves to low-volatility stocks that reside in defensive sectors and offer reliable and rising dividends. Lastly, we eliminated any name that was underperforming the broader market during the current downturn.

That process left us the following 10 picks as our top candidates for the best stocks to buy for a bear market.

  • SEE MORE 11 Best Investments to Inflation-Proof Your Portfolio

Share prices, price targets, analysts’ recommendations and other market data are as of May 17, courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence and YCharts, unless otherwise noted. Stocks are listed by conviction of analysts’ Buy calls, from weakest to strongest.

8 Risky Jobs That Pay Big Bucks

Often with dangerous jobs, the pay doesn’t come close to compensating for the risk. In fact, plenty of perilous jobs pay pay sums compared to other options. Take fishermen and loggers. They can expect median salaries of under $35,000 a year, $23,000 less than the mean for all workers. Yet the fatality rate for fishermen is nearly 39 times the rate for all occupations, the highest of any profession, in fact. Loggers, at nearly 28 times the overall fatality rate, rank second.

The COVID-19 pandemic shook up the risk scenario in the workplace. Overall, workplace injuries and illnesses were down 5.7% in 2020, compared to the previous year. But a closer look at the numbers reveals that while injuries dropped significantly, illnesses went way up. 

The pandemic also made a new group of low-paying jobs among the riskiest in the nation. Nursing assistants had the highest number of days of any profession away from work in 2020, the most recent year available, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They had 1,024 days away from work per 10,000 workers in 2020, an increase of 14 times the rate in 2019. Yet nursing assistants make a mean wage of just over $30,000.

Going back the last few years before the pandemic, there were generally between 10,000 and 11,000 respiratory illnesses among U.S. workers each year. In 2020, however, there were nearly 429,000. Conversely, the days away from work decreased slightly for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, whose mean wage was just over $50,000, between 2019 and 2020.
 

As perilous as work has become for many during the pandemic, fewer people were injured on the job in 2020 than in any year since 2013, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still, those data showed an American worker died every 111 minutes from a job-related injury. The most common cause of death on the job was transportation-related incidents, which resulted in 1,778 deaths that year, more than 37% of all work-related deaths.
 

Not surprisingly, workers in jobs that involved transportation and moving material accounted for the biggest proportion of occupational deaths at a total of 2,258, accounting for more than 47% of the total work-related deaths in the U.S.

We believe that if you’re going to take a risky job, you should at least get compensated handsomely for it. So we crunched the numbers on injuries, fatalities and salaries to identify eight occupations offering paychecks that make up for the elevated risks by paying more than the national median of about $58,000. Top earners in many of these fields can enjoy six-figure salaries, in some cases even without college degrees. Plus, many of them won’t be replaced by technology, which spells job security. 

Take a look at these risky jobs that pay well.

Data sources: All data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unless otherwise noted. Most statistics from 2020, unless otherwise indicated. That year, the fatality rate for all occupations was 3.4 deaths per 100,000 workers.. “Top pay” represents the annual salary of a worker in the 90th percentile of an occupation, unless otherwise noted. We used the most updated data provided by BLS. In some instances, that was as far back as 2019 or older. Also, in some instances, the bureau provided median salary information, while for other occupations, it provided average salary information.

  • SEE MORE The Key to Employee Retention? Compassion!