The bottom line
▪ The average cost of health coverage offered by employers rose to $18,764 for a family plan in 2017, a 3 percent increase over last year. Employees paid $5,714 on average, or 31 percent of the premium. Costs for individual workers grew to $6,690, up 4 percent, of which employees paid 18 percent on average.
The Wall Street Journal
▪ A Nov. 7 United flight from San Francisco to Honolulu will be the last flight of the storied Boeing 747 jumbo jet by a U.S. airline. Delta and United were the last two U.S. airlines to continue flying the so-called Queen of the Skies. 747s have been gradually replaced by more efficient, twinengine jets. Delta’s final 747 flight took place this month.
▪ Target will hire 100,000 temporary holiday workers in 2017, a marked increase from the 70,000 it has hired in each of the past four years. Retailers are planning an aggressive push for holiday sales: Jobs site Indeed.com says there has been a 34 percent increase in seasonal job postings compared with last year.
▪ Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, hit $1 trillion in value this week for the first time. The fund was established more than 20 years ago to invest revenue arising from the country’s oil extraction. Its current value is roughly equal to Mexico’s annual GDP.
▪ Physicians are the highestpaid salaried employees in the U.S., earning on average $187,876 a year, according to a report from job-search platform Glassdoor. Second are pharmacy managers, at $149,064 a year, followed by patent attorneys ($139,272) and medical science liaisons ($132,842).
USA Today ■
