New York City

Corporate contributions to charities increase

American corporations were slightly more generous in their charitable giving last year, according to a survey by the Conference Board.

Total giving among 134 companies sampled from 2002 to 2003 rose from $3.1 billion in 2002 to $3.9 billion last year, the New York-based private research organization said.

The median giving rose about 13 percent, from $6.6 million to $7.4 million, while the average jumped 24 percent, to $28.9 million in 2003.

Overall, 232 companies from the collection gave $5.7 billion. Pharmaceutical companies led the giving, with eight companies responsible for a third of that amount — mostly in noncash donations.

Chicago

Quarter of workers use sick days like vacation

Do you ever call in sick when you’re not sick?

More than a third of workers, or 35 percent, said they had done so at least once in the past year, according to a poll by CareerBuilder.com, a job search site based in Chicago. Ten percent said they’d done it three or more times.

Why?

A quarter of the workers said they consider sick days equivalent to vacation time and treat them as such. Twenty percent said they called in sick simply because they didn’t feel like going to work that day.

The August e-mail survey involved 1,600 workers, including 700 hiring managers.

Washington, D.C.

College students deserve some credit

The warnings over the past few years about college students getting too deeply into credit card debt might be sinking in. A study of about 310,000 credit card accounts found little difference in the way students and older adults use credit cards.

About 88 percent of student accounts were paid up, compared with 92 percent of older adults and 88 percent of young adults not in school. The average student balance was $552, versus $1,465 for young adults and $2,342 for older adults.

However, the percentage of delinquent accounts was higher among students (12 percent) than adults (8 percent).

The study was conducted by the Georgetown University Credit Research Center, with account data from active accounts from 2000 to 2001. The work was a continuation of a General Accounting Office study begun at the behest of members of Congress alarmed about students’ abuse of credit cards.