What's not to like about Halloween? You dress up, stuff yourself with candy and, if you're working for an employer, you likely get a paycheck. Yes, Halloween is payday. But, while it may be a treat for you, it can be a bit of a trick for employers to get their numbers straight. To celebrate the day, we gathered some payday horror stories for you from HR and finance pros.

Halloween isn't the only time where you'll see zombies armed with gadgets; according to this Confused.com infographic, social media zombies are everywhere year-round. Is the zombie apocalypse already upon us?

You might think that smartphones boost productivity and would therefore whittle down the time we spend at work, but according to a new study by Pixmania, a U.K.-based tech retailer, these gadgets actually extend our workday. Pixmania's survey revealed that smartphones actually add two hours to our day -- and that's after a standard nine- to 10-hour shift.

Where do you work everyday? Who signs your paycheck? And, how do you plan to vote in the presidential election? In our continued investigation of where Romney and Obama are getting their support, we compared two different types of workers: those who work for themselves versus those who work at non-profits. Can you guess which candidate each of these groups prefers?

What happens when macho jobs in manufacturing decline, at the same time as traditionally female occupations in the health care and services sector continue to expand? In her new book "The End of Men: The Rise of Women," Hanna Rosin argues that "a nascent middle-class matriarchy" emerges, in which women pay the bills and the pay gap between men and women narrows and even disappears, but for the worst reason possible: because men can no longer find jobs.

Over the last few weeks, we've been sharing positive news about wages in every industry, metro and job category covered by The PayScale Index. In Boston, wages are up. For small companies? Same story. "But," you ask, "where are has wage growth been strongest and fastest of all?" One leader stands out: energy.

Kaplan Test Prep recently completed its latest survey of college admissions officers, and its results suggest that students should think before they tweet and proactively monitor their social media footprint. Can your child's activity on Facebook and YouTube actually hinder their academic future?

Today's world revolves around online identities, social networks and search engine data. This infographic by Qnary outlines why the "digital you" matters in nearly every aspect of your life.

Imagine drinking in the scent of sweet milk chocolate and roasting peanuts for hours on end, all while earning a living. Sound too delicious to be true? We're talking about life as an employee of The Hershey Company, the makers of some of your favorite Halloween trick-or-tweet treats.

Lena Dunham's backlash began almost before her fame started in earnest. Her success was the result of nepotism, people sniffed, even if those people couldn't name her artist parents. Her TV show was entirely focused on the exploits of privileged, white, upper-class kids. She doesn't deserve her $3.5. million book deal or spots on all those talk shows. But are folks really mad about Dunham's work? Or are they mostly aggravated that she's, well, young?

Employee motivation can make or break a business' retention rates, and in a column for Inc., Minda Zetlin offers up three essential questions managers can ask any team member to uncover the secrets to his or her engagement at work. Even self-employed workers can benefit from asking themselves a couple of these questions, as their answers will reveal key insights about passion and drive.

Social media is a huge part of our lives, both professional and personal. Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and whatever they've invented since we started this sentence, are great ways to connect with friends, acquaintances, and yes, potential employers. But how connected do we really want to be with our bosses?

When we heard the bad news about unemployment over the last few years, wages went down in many industries and towns, according to our PayScale Index. Do wages always drop when unemployment rises? Since we’ve been tracking wage trends since 2006, we figured we’d take a look back six years and see what we could learn about this question.

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

Remember when you were a kid, and you were the only person in your house who could program the VCR? (Or, for you Gen Y types, the DVR.) Well, in a couple years, we'll have a lot more sympathy for the funny old fogeys of our youth. That's because someday, today's babies will grow up, and they will eat our lunch, business-wise.

Ben & Jerry's is officially a certified B Corporation. The Unilever-acquired ice cream maker is the first subsidiary to earn this distinction, which is essentially the sustainable business equivalent to LEED certifications for green buildings.

Research on wages in the U.S. reveals that women in traditional office jobs earn about 76 cents to every dollar earned by men, but how about entrepreneurs? The latest insights from the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor reveal a surprising statistic on the salaries female business owners pay themselves.

By Marissa Brassfield, PayScale.com

We're frequently asked to present our qualifications to others, whether we're in the thick of a keynote or are in the hot seat of an interviewer's chair. In a recent column for Harvard Business Review, motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. shared a presentation mistake that can break even your best efforts.

By Marissa Brassfield, PayScale.com

You might think that creative professionals have it easy, but this Column Five infographic reveals some of creatives' common phobias. From Comic Sans to Internet outages, these silly and serious stressors prove that workers in this industry have plenty to worry about.

By Alida Moore, PayScale.com

Do Ph.D.s vote differently from MBAs? We surveyed PayScale's users about their education level and voting preference to find out.