On Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week.

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

Which retail workers are merry, jolly and happy to serve you this holiday season? PayScale.com asked retail workers at various major outlets to rate their levels of stress and satisfaction on the job and came up with a happiness score for each group. It turns out that some holiday workers like their retail gigs much more than others – and pay and benefits don’t always make the big difference.

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

One group of modern workers has developed a special reputation for caffeine addiction and junk food intake: computer geeks. These are the software developers and computer programmers who stay up all night finishing projects, only to grab a pizza and a coke for breakfast and play hours of video games to burn off steam. What is the deal with their whacky work and sleep habits? Can you relate to them?

By Bridget Quigg

Ready for a gig that pays you twenty dollars per hour? There are many options out there. And, of the following list of ten jobs, less than half require school beyond a high school diploma. See which skills you might already have or are interested in and get started.

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

Do you have a nagging feeling that a better job awaits you, one that caters to your passions and pays the bills? How can you get working toward your dream job? We spoke with career coach and author Jim Hopkinson (Salary Tutor) who offered practical, step-by-step advice on how to honor what you care about most and earn a living at the same time.

We recently released an insightful bit of data that looks at the ratio of pay for Fortune 50 CEOs to the pay of employees at their respective companies. The results are unsettling -- on average the Fortune 50 CEOs earn 213 times more than their workers.

Who tops the list for the biggest ratio and which CEO earns pay closest to their employees? See the answers below...

This time of year it seems that there is a holiday mixer nearly every night of the week. And don’t get me started on the “Let’s catch up over an eggnog latte” invites I’ve started to see in my inboxes lately. How can we turn this merry making into career enhancement? Use it to grow our professional network.

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale

"The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more."— Tweet from President Obama, December 6, 2011

This morning in Osawatomie, Kansas, a small town of just 4,600 residents, President Barack Obama spoke to a group of rural Americans that likely didn't include many billionaires. He focused his speech on the American middle class and why he thinks it is theatened. Who did he point a finger at as a group contributing to this eroding middle class? CEOs at major corporations.

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

How much do certain CEOs make compared to the employees at their companies? A lot. Many earn hundreds, even thousands, of times more than their typical employee.

Online salary database PayScale.com researched the total cash compensation for CEOs of the top 50 companies on Fortune’s exclusive 500 list. Then, PayScale calculated the median annual earnings for workers at those companies and came up with a ratio of CEO to typical worker's pay and created an infographic showing the results. Spoiler alert: Prepare to be shocked.

By Elise Oras, PayScale.com

Every Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week.