welfare wages

Definition

Compensation from employment that's so pitiful you'd need government assistance to survive, even with a job. These poverty-level wages force workers to supplement income with public benefits just to cover basic necessities.

Example Usage

The company pays welfare wages—most employees are on food stamps despite working full-time.

Source: Urban Dictionary (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=welfare%20wages&defid=9951625)

Related Terms

Beginner

General Ledger

The master accounting record containing all financial transactions, organized by account. It's the single source of truth for a company's finances, assuming someone entered everything correctly.

💰 Finance / Accounting

Beginner

accrued expenses

Costs incurred but not yet paid, recorded as liabilities on the balance sheet because accrual accounting insists on acknowledging unpleasant realities before the bills arrive. Financial statements' way of saying 'don't get too excited, you owe money.'

💰 Finance / Accounting

Advanced

Consolidated Financial Statements

Combining financial results from a parent company and all its subsidiaries into one statement—to hide where the actual problems are located.

💰 Finance / Accounting

Intermediate

black swan

An unpredictable, rare event with extreme impact that seems obvious only in hindsight. Named after the discovery that black swans exist—contradicting the assumption that all swans were white—and now the go-to excuse for every financial catastrophe.

💰 Finance / Accounting

Intermediate

ROI (Return on Investment)

How much profit you make from an investment—the metric everyone cares about after spending the money.

💰 Finance / Accounting

Intermediate

receivable

Money that someone owes you but hasn't paid yet, living in that optimistic space between "they said they'd pay" and "we're calling the lawyers." It's an asset on paper because theoretically you'll collect it, but in practice it's IOU notes from varying degrees of reliable sources. Also known as "accounts receivable" when accountants want to sound official.

💰 Finance / Accounting

Translate This Term

See “welfare wages” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Intermediate

debt-to-equity ratio

A leverage metric comparing total liabilities to shareholder equity, revealing whether a company is conservatively finan...