Raises are starting to make a comeback.

Reports Wednesday that Google plans to give a 10 percent pay raise to all of its 23,000 employees in January reflects a wider trend. According to a new survey from CareerBuilder, 31 percent of employers said they are willing to negotiate 2011 salary increases with current employees even though the job market is still very tight and companies are still not exactly staffing up aggressively.

Bad news for President Obama. The morning after our leader joined the rest of Americans and finally acknowledged that jobs are the most important issue facing the country, chief financial officers signaled they don't expect the employment picture to improve anytime soon.

Sure, 62 percent of the 371 corporate CFOs who participated in the latest quarterly survey conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business said they do not plan any layoffs for this year. Big deal. Most companies have already gotten around to this cost-cutting measure. In fact, 77 percent of those surveyed said they already cut rank and file during the economic downturn.

Just in case you thought there was any significant relationship between executive pay and performance at banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money, a new study should put the nail in that particular delusion.

 It shows that, while absolute levels of compensation for CFOs (and CEOs) fell at some banks from 2006 to 2008, there was no measurable link between pay and changes in performance for the group as a whole.