Also known as: earned incomes · wages · salary income
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
Income derived from personal labor or services rather than from investments or other passive sources.
Ethan Evans worked as an assembly line employee at Elite Dynamics and signed an agreement directing a fixed portion of each upcoming paycheck to a lender until a personal loan was repaid. The arrangement transferred rights to compensation earned through his labor. Because the transfer involved employee compensation, it remained outside the coverage of secured transactions rules.
Paula worked extended shifts as a nurse at a state hospital under a defective scheduling system that failed to record overtime hours. She sought back pay for the additional compensation she had earned through her services. The claim turned on whether sovereign immunity barred recovery of those amounts in federal court.
In 1967 Congress enacted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which initially applied only to private employers. In 1974 Congress amended the Act through the Fair Labor Standards Amendments to extend its substantive requirements to the States. Congress redefined the term employer to include a State or political subdivision of a State and any agency or instrumentality of a State or a political subdivision of a State. The same legislation also amended the incorporated Fair Labor Standards Act enforcement provision to authorize suits against any employer including a public agency in federal or state court. In December 1994 Roderick MacPherson and Marvin Narz, associate professors ages 57 and 58 at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, filed suit alleging age discrimination, retaliation for filing charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and disparate impact from an evaluation system. In April 1995 J. Daniel Kimel, Jr., and other current and former faculty and librarians over age 40 at Florida State University and Florida International University filed suit against the Florida Board of Regents alleging that the failure to allocate previously agreed market-adjustment salary funds had a disparate impact on employees with longer service records. In May 1996 Wellington Dickson filed suit against the Florida Department of Corrections alleging failure to promote him because of his age and in retaliation for grievances concerning age discrimination. The District Court in the MacPherson case granted the university's motion to dismiss on Eleventh Amendment grounds. The District Courts in the Kimel and Dickson cases denied the state defendants' motions to dismiss. The United States intervened in all three cases. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit consolidated the appeals and held that the ADEA does not abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals.
View caseEarned income consists of wages or net earnings from self-employment obtained through personal labor. Unearned income includes dividends, interest, and gifts that do not require active participation.
An assignment of wages or other compensation of an employee falls outside Article 9. The exclusion prevents ordinary wage claims from being subjected to the statute's filing and priority rules.
A child's earned income from after-school work is considered a financial resource of the child. Courts weigh it as one factor when determining the amount of parental support but do not treat it as a complete substitute for parental obligations.
…the private 93 sectors of the labor market. Federal rules outlawing discrimination in the workplace, like the regulation of wages and hours or health and safety standards, may be enforced against public as well as private employers. In my opinion, Congress' power to authorize federal remedies against state agencies…