Salary surveys and their validity 1

[EngineerDave]

First I would like to know some good sources of salary surveys. I am guessing the best route is whatever professional organization one belongs too.

Secondly, do you believe the numbers at salary.com? I also wonder how many numbers of respondents they base their numbers on. Is it possible to find this out?

My point is that a salary survey based on only a few people is not as helpful as one based on many, but in the end there is so much variability based on different industries and companies.

 

[Binary]

The place I look for salary and job statistics is the US Labor Dept site at

http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_data.htm

I suspect that salary.com is deriving their data from that source because I've tried all sorts of goofy combos and they always give numbers.

For example, I tried a Ceramics Engineer III in the little tiny town of 1,500 people in which I grew up and they had a number. I tried several other professions and each had salary data for that town. No way! Something goofy's going on there.

 

[EngineerDave]

Thanks for the website. That is a very interesting page!A

Those excel files are huge!

 

[ProEpro]

Your state depertments of labor will also have listings. These maybe the most accurate. There are also companies like Hay that make a living our of salary data.



ProEpro

http://www.whitelightdesign.com

 

[RDK]

Most engineering associations in Canada also conduct salary surveys. Look at

http://www.apegm.mb.ca

for the Manitoba data and you can follow the links to the other Canadian associations from there.



Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com