Products May 12, 2008

State Street Unveils Two SPDRs

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation, said two SPDR exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will begin trading on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) Tuesday.
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Developed to provide investors with precise exposure to targeted segments of the international markets, the company said the SPDRs include:

  • SPDR DJ Wilshire Global Real Estate ETF (ticker: RWO) — index including more than 240 commercial and residential real estate companies domiciled in 23 countries across the globe, including the U.S (expense ratio of 0.5%);
  • SPDR S&P International Mid Cap ETF (ticker: MDD) — index including more than 850 companies with market capitalizations between $2 and $5 billion domiciled in 25 developed countries outside the U.S. (expense ratio of 0.45%).

“Offering a level of international diversification that has not been readily accessible in the past, the new SPDR S&P International Mid Cap ETF was developed to meet increasing investor demand for more high quality international portfolio management tools,” said James Ross, Senior Managing Director at State Street.  “With the addition of the SPDR DJ Wilshire Global Real Estate ETF, our family of SPDRs ETFs now provides investors with distinct exposure to the domestic, international, and global real estate markets.”

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As of March 31, U.S. assets under management in State Street’s ETFs totaled more than $148.2 billion.

-Ellie Behling

Benefits May 9, 2008

Mom Salaries Decline in 2008

May 9, 2008 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Salary.com's annual Mom Salary Survey found that for 2008, the time mothers spend performing the 10 most popular "Mom job functions" would equate to an annual cash compensation of $116,805 for a Stay-at-Home Mom and $68,405 for a Working Mom, down from last year's calculations of $138,094 and $85,938.
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Salary.com said in a press release that it revised the calculation to reflect the impact of company size on mom’s compensation and provides a more complete view using total cash compensation for the mom job. Previously, the survey was based on the national median base salary for all company sizes (see Survey: Stay-At-Home Moms Get 3% Raise in 2007 ).

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“Smaller organizations typically pay less. By using data for companies with fewer than 25 employees-offset slightly by the addition of annual bonuses-we saw a net decrease in U.S mom’s pay of nearly $21K from 2007. We believe this is a valuable way to help educate the average person about the factors affecting compensation and how employers determine pay,” said Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com.

According to the announcement, the primary driver of mom’s six-figure salary, however, remains the amount of overtime worked. This year, mom’s overtime averaged 54.4 hours per week as Stay-at-Home Moms work a 94.4 hour “work week” and Working Moms reported an average 54.6 hour “mom work week” in addition to their paying jobs.

The job titles that best matched a mom’s definition of her work included housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, laundry machine operator, computer operator, psychologist, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive officer, and janitor. In the Mom Salary Survey, 18,000 moms quantified their hours worked in each role for a typical week.

The survey data has been incorporated into the MomSalaryWizard, a tool on the Web site where users can personalize the survey data to reflect time spent per job in an average week and print a personalized paycheck.

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