It is a true honour to land in your inbox in the post-sales era - with Black Friday and Cyber Monday now in the rear-view mirror, your email can once again be a place of calm. Until Boxing Day.

While its more glamorous sibling, gold, may have been stealing the spotlight this year, second-placed silver has been having a price run of its own.

The metal hit an all-time high of US$56.72 (AU$56.71) per ounce in November.

Here’s what’s driving up its price.

Silver peaked back in 1980, when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the U.S. market during an inflation crisis. They bought so much silver to drive up the price, the U.S. Government was forced to step in to protect national supplies.

Silver has experienced a renewed surge over the past two years, gaining over 160% in value from its October 2023 low. This year alone, the price of silver has risen more than 80%, beating out gold’s 60% gains.

As TDA reported earlier in the year, during periods of uncertainty, people turn to gold… and there has been a lot of uncertainty this year. Gold reached a record high price of over $AU5,100 per ounce in July. Since then, the in-demand metal has only continued to climb in value, hitting $6,756 per ounce in October. 

Also known as “the Devil’s metal”, silver is much more volatile than gold. This is, in part, due to silver’s market being about a tenth the size of gold. It means smaller transactions have a greater impact on the market.

Thankfully, this surge is about more practical reasons than two brothers trying to game the system during a cost-of-living crisis. 

Silver has a greater industrial use case than gold. It initially slumped earlier in the year, over uncertainty that the U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs would force an industrial slowdown. 

Those concerns have since eased, though, as China rolls out record amounts of solar panels — a technology that requires significant amounts of silver. 

Current silver demand is being largely driven by its use in the manufacturing of electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, transport and building projects, as well as for AI components. 

This has resulted in a supply deficit, according to the Silver Institute. In other words, there isn’t enough silver to keep pace, which is pushing up the metal’s value. 

In October, the U.S. also announced plans to add silver to its ‘critical mineral’ list. The decision means silver will be a key part of American policy-makers’ long-term security and economic outlook.

Paul Syms from Invesco, an independent investment management firm, told U.S news outlet CNBC: “Silver crosses over that bridge between precious and industrial metals, and the way technology is going on, the batteries, the solar panels, it’s got some great use cases as we move into a more electrified world.” 

Reporting by Lachlan Keller.

Australian employers are making progress towards reducing the gender pay gap, new data shows.

The national wage gap fell 0.7% this year, according to the latest Gender Equality Scorecard from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). The country’s gender pay gap now sits at 21.1%, down from 21.8% last year.

In real terms, this means that for every dollar a man earns in Australia, a woman earns 78.9 cents. The difference adds up to $28,356 for the year.

WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge said, “employers are shifting the dial towards fairness, which is helping to close the gender pay gap.” However, she called the improvements “modest”.

The gender pay gap refers to the difference in how men and women are paid across all levels and industries.

It does not mean paying men and women differently for the same job, which is illegal.

The WGEA report shows us the difference between what Australian men and women earn across different companies and stages of their careers. It includes full-time, part-time and casual workers.

In 2023, the Federal Government passed a law requiring businesses with at least 100 workers to publish their gender pay gap. The legislation mandated that the data be published by the WGEA – a national body tasked with reducing gender discrimination for workers around the country.

The report provides “an annual update on the state of workplace gender equality in Australia.”

The first tranche of data, released last year, showed the ‘median’ (middle) pay gap in earnings between men and women.

WGEA publications now also include the average remuneration of CEOs, heads of businesses, and casual managers.

The WGEA sets a gender pay gap “target range” of between -5% to +5% to account for normal changes at workplaces.

According to its 2024-25 Gender Equality Scorecard, “50% of employers have a gender pay gap above 11.2% with only 22.5% of employers having a gender pay gap in the target range.”

70% had a gender pay gap favouring men, and only 6.7% favoured women.

More than half of employers (55%) successfully reduced their pay gap in the year to 31 August 2025. However, the WGEA attributed this, in part, to “uneven wage growth and gender pay gap reductions between income levels.”

The Scorecard noted an increased representation of women in leadership and on boards, but a widening gap in CEO salaries.

“The gender pay gap at the top increased 1.2% points to 26.2% in the past 12 months,” according to the WGEA.

After bonuses, overtime and additional payments are factored in, male CEOs take home an average of $185,335 more than their female counterparts per year.

The report showed that workplace equality in some areas was improving. For example, almost all workplaces (99%) had policies in place to address sexual harassment.

Men also took 20% of all parental leave this year, up 0.3%. Shared domestic labour is a key factor in boosting women’s workforce opportunities and participation. 

This year’s WGEA scorecard identified three key focus areas for employers: ensure safety from harassment in the workplace, improve the gender balance, and dismantle stereotypes.

The report found that more employers are consulting their employees on issues of gender equality, and this is leading to positive pay outcomes.

“WGEA encourages all employers to undertake a comprehensive gender pay gap analysis and as part of that review performance pay structures and access to overtime, to ensure they are fair and accessible for everyone,” Wooldridge said. 

It’s that time of year again - lights are being hung, stockings are being filled, and Mariah Carey is raking it in.

According to various news outlets, including The Economist and Forbes, Carey’s 1994 hit ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ generates about $US3 million every year in royalties, with its popularity on streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify driving a reliable December surge.

Despite its 31st lap around the sun, the song has set a new record this year - it is the earliest the hit has ever made it into the Billboard Hot 100, arriving on the charts in the last week of October.

Mariah Carey = the undisputed Queen of Christmas.