Sam’s Club is boosting pay for nearly 100,000 hourly workers, with the retail chain’s starting wage rising by a buck to $16.

Longer-tenured employees will get bigger pay hikes, the Walmart-owned retailer announced on Tuesday. The adjustment will take effect on November 2, as retailers gear up for the vital holiday shopping season. 

“Until now, retail compensation has largely been about hourly wages, and it’s almost unheard of to talk about frontline associate compensation in terms of a predictable financial future — that changes for Sam’s Club starting today,” Chris Nicholas, president and CEO of Sam’s Club, said in a statement. 

Employees can expect their hourly pay to increase between 3% and 6% based on their years of service, with the average rate expected to top $19 per hour, said Sam’s Club, which operates about 600 stores across the U.S. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, has 1.6 million U.S. workers.

A wage of $16 per hour would translate into a yearly salary of $33,280 assuming a 40-hour work week. Sam’s Club rival Costco Wholesale in July raised its minimum wage for U.S. workers to $19.50 per hour.

More satisfied workers are more likely to stay in their jobs, especially in retail, where turnover in 2022 averaged 60%, according to Sam’s Club. The poverty threshold for a family of four in 2023 was $30,900, according to data released last week by the Census Bureau. 

Retail work is among the lowest-paid jobs, with the industry’s nearly 4.1 million workers earning a median of $16.30 an hour in 2023, according to federal statistics. 

By comparison, the nation’s 350,300 bank tellers earned median pay of $18.10 an hour last year, with some larger players offering more. Bank of America recently said it’s raising its U.S. minimum wage to $24, starting in October, with a goal of hitting $25 in 2025. 

Labor advocates launched the “Fight for $15” campaign in 2012 to put pressure on employers to raise the pay of fast-food and other low-wage workers. More than 30 U.S. states now require employers to offer a minimum wage surpassing the federal base, Department of Labor data shows. 

The federal minimum wage has remained frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009.

An old shipwreck, believed to be the World War I vessel the SS Tobol, has been uncovered off the northeast coast of Scotland, solving what discoverers say is a “107-year-old maritime mystery.”

The merchant vessel was among several detected during geophysical and environmental surveys for a forthcoming offshore wind farm off the Scottish coast, MarramWind. ScottishPower and Shell, partners in developing the proposed wind farm, said data gathered by sonar scans helped discover the wreck. 

Known for its ‘turret deck’ design commonly used for steam cargo ships, the Tobol was a Russian vessel that was torpedoed by the German U-boat in September 1917 while it was traveling from Blyth, England to Arkhangelsk, Russia. Tobol was built in the port city of Sunderland at the start of the 20th century and run by a steamer company until 1904 when a Russian warship captured the ship. The Russians changed the ship’s name from the SS Cheltenham to the SS Tobol.

Another shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Scotland just last month when a group of divers came across what’s believed to be The HMS Hawke, a WWI ship that sank after being torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1914.

 
Diver Steve Mortimer told the BBC that the wreck is a “really remarkable time capsule.” 

The Tobol had been missing for over 100 years when it was discovered during the survey work for the MarramWind project. 

“It’s incredible that – more than a century on ­– we finally have a sense of where the SS Tobol likely went down thanks to MarramWind,” said Toby Gane, marine and coastal cultural heritage and archaeology lead for WSP, an engineering professional services consulting firm.

Colin Anderson, Development Manager for MarramWind, called the shipwreck discovery an “extraordinary find.” 

“We always expect to come across wrecks when carrying out works like this, but these tend to be smaller vessels and known to the authorities,” Anderson said in MarramWind’s statement. “While the Tobol was known to have been torpedoed in the war, its location was unclear, so to discover it after more than a century and uncover its history is something special.”

MarramWind said an “exclusion zone” has been placed around the shipwreck to protect it as work on the offshore wind project continues and that discussions with the UK Hydrographic Office and Historic Environment Scotland are ongoing to “to ensure the wreck of the SS Tobol is protected and preserved.”

Once completed, electricity generated by MarramWind is expected to service 3.5 million homes.

Thanks to the double-whammy of inflation and higher interest rates, Americans have amassed a $1.1 trillion mountain of credit card debt. Borrowers who are carrying balances may soon get some modest relief if, as widely expected, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday moves to lower interest rates for the time since 2020.

On September 18, the central bank is expected to reduce its benchmark rate, which stands at its highest point in 23 years. Although economists agree that the Fed will reduce rates this week, experts are mixed on whether Fed will kick off a cycle of monetary easing with a 0.25 percentage point cut or a larger 0.5 percentage point reduction designed to guard against recession risks, according to financial data firm FactSet.

Millions of consumers have racked up credit card debt in recent years as more families have relied on plastic to pay for household expenses amid price increases for everything from groceries to rent. While inflation has now cooled to below 3% on an annual basis, people who are carrying credit card balances are getting socked by historically high annual percentage rates, which make it harder to dig out from debt. 

The average APR on a new credit card offer now stands at 24.92%, the highest since LendingTree began tracking new rates in 2019, according to the financial services site. 

About 4 in 10 Americans carry a credit card balance, according to data from the Federal Reserve. The average balance is about $6,900, LendingTree says. 

Because credit card rates generally track the federal funds rate, a a Fed cut on Wednesday will eventually trickle down and could result in lower APRs for people who carry balances. But borrowers should keep their expectations in check because a 0.25 or 0.5 percentage point cut won’t make that much of an immediate difference, according to LendingTree chief credit analyst Matt Schulz/

“While lower rates are certainly a good thing for those struggling with debt, the truth is that this one rate cut isn’t really going to make much of a difference for most people,” Schulz said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. 

Difference between a 0.25 and 0.5 percentage point cut

Take someone with a $5,000 balance on a credit card with a 24.92% APR. Assuming payments of $250 each month, it would take the person 27 months to pay off the balance and cost an additional $1,528 in interest, Schulz noted. 

• If the credit card issuer reduces its APR by 0.25 percentage points, to 24.67%, the borrower would still need 27 months to pay down the bill, but the interest would be $1,506 — a savings of $22 over that period, or less than $1 a month. 
• If the issuer cut the rate by 0.5 percentage points, it would take 26 months to pay off the balance and cost $1,485 in interest. That would save a month of payments but also reduces the interest costs by $43, or about $1.50 a month. 

The bigger impacts may come later in the year or in 2025 given that the Fed is expected to continue cutting rates into next year. Many economists are forecasting the federal funds rate will drop to 3% to 3.5% by May 2025, or more than two percentage points lower than today. 

In the meantime, Schulz recommends that consumers “take matters into their own hands.” For instance, people with credit card debt can consolidate their debts with a 0% balance transfer card, or look into a personal loan, which typically has a much lower rate than credit cards. 

“When looking for a new loan, shopping around and comparing rates from multiple lenders can lead to big savings, too,” Schulz said. “It is all absolutely worth your time.”