Salary Surveys (FAQs)

ERI reports three sections of data, each with their own sources:

1. Public Databases

   Executive information is from IRS Forms 990, SEC Forms 10-K, and Canadian information circulars. Non-executive information is from the US OEWS Occupational Employment and Wage Survey and Statistics Canada.

2. ERI Assessor Database

   Data reported from ERI Assessor Series databases reflects data as of March 31 of the given survey year.

3. Survey Participant Database

   ERI compiles employer-provided information from completed surveys submitted during the survey participation period.

   For more information, please refer to the survey methodology.

   For the most accurate, up-to-date salary information by position, industry, employer size, and location, we direct HR Professionals to ERI Economic Research Institute Assessor Series applications.

The Total Direct Annual Compensation is the sum of Annual Salary and Incentive/Variable Pay.

Annual salaries are gross base pay, and are exclusive of premium, incentive, or variable pay.

Incentive/variable pay includes annual bonuses, commissions, and rewards from variable pay plans.

The Total Annual Compensation is the sum of Direct Compensation and Allowances and Benefits.

Direct Compensation includes salary, fees, bonuses, and severance payments paid, along with payments of amounts reportable as deferred compensation.

Allowances & Benefits include all welfare benefit plan payment, all other forms of deferred compensation and future severance payments, both taxable and nontaxable fringe benefits, expense allowances, and reimbursements that recipients must report as income.

Benchmark job titles and accompanying job descriptions are taken from either the ERI Executive Compensation Assessor or the ERI Salary Assessor. Participant data collected in ERI Salary Surveys goes directly into each of the Assessor Platform databases at the conclusion of the survey cycle.

Benchmark job titles are assigned to each survey based on industry-fit or customer request. Benchmark job titles may change from year to year, but never when participant data is obtained.

Expert users, such as Human Resource and Compensation Departments of major companies, pay consultants, contractors, and attorneys, often conducting prevailing wage analyses, typically rely on the wide-ranging and long-proven databases of ERI Economic Research Institute. ERI has been the authoritative source of current consensus competitive pay survey information for thousands of corporate subscribers, including most of the Fortune 500 companies, and many consultants, non - profit organizations, and governmental agencies for over three decades.Our survey analysis applications are interactive and reasonably priced, for corporate and expert research use.

ERI's Salary Assessor provides consensus salary ranges for more than 8,000 position titles as compiled from available published wage and salary survey sources. Estimates may be adjusted for user inputs of salary planning date, metro area, industry, and company size. The Salary Assessor includes position descriptions for job matching. Benchmark listings for jobs by industry, as well as multiple area listings for a single job in up to 500 metro areas, are provided in summary listings. The Salary Assessor also includes reliability statistics.

ERI's Executive Compensation Assessor compares salaries and bonuses for more than 700 position titles in the US, Canada, and Europe. Executive compensation levels are calculated based on user input for position, industry, location, pay strategy, executive performance, and salary planning date. Compare your organization's executive pay packages to competitors, viewing their past compensation packages for top officers, including stock options and benefits.This is the most comprehensive database of executive compensation information available.

ERI's Nonprofit Comparables Assessor compares executive compensation at nonprofit organizations in the United States. Executive compensation levels are calculated based on user input for position, industry, pay strategy, and executive performance. Utilized by the IRS and the NY State Attorney General Charities Bureau, ERI is a trusted source of compensation data.

Each benchmark job will have a rate of error displayed for each applicable database. Compensation levels paid may differ remarkably between these categories. Rather than combine these databases, this survey provides each separately to allow the user to make his/her own determinations and/or comparisons.

1. 990 Tax-Exempt Database A standard error is reported based upon the actual data shown in this survey data population.
2. Public Databases Information is principally from government and nonprofit organizations, using composite results of the US OEWS Occupational Employment and Wage Survey. This US Government survey reports a Relative Standard Error which is reproduced for the year, area, and job family requested.
3. U.S. Proxy & ERI Executive Databases The standard error is calculated only from measurements of variance from predicted mean displayed.
4. Survey Participant Database Standard errors are calculated via the traditional formula of dividing the sample standard deviation by the square root of the sample size. The error value shown is a Relative Standard Error (which is the Standard Error divided by the Mean expressed as a percentage).

A rate of error will not be shown where more than one source of data exists. The mixing of OEWS Relative Standard Error from nonprofit/public sources, regression derived Standard Errors, and ERI's Standard Deviations does not allow the presentation of a meaningful, defensible statistical measure as it might combine three different types of error measure. If shown, the rate of error is derived as described above from the one data source reported.

The mean is the average of all survey data available for the particular job that is being reported. The mean can be found by first summing the values of all the observations in a sample or population and then dividing by the total number of observations. This is the most common measure of central tendency.

The median is the value at which half of all incumbents earn more and half of all incumbents earn less than the calculated salary. The median can be found by rank-ordering all observations from lowest to highest and taking the middle observation. Medians are the preferred measure of central tendency in populations with skewed distributions or populations with large numbers of outliers.

The general definition of a percentile is a point on a rank-ordered scale, found by dividing a group of observations into parts in order of magnitude from lowest to highest. The first percentile approximates the very lowest/bottom number found, while the 100th percentile is the very highest reported. The nth percentile is the point exceeding n percent of the observations. For example, in test taking, a score equal to or greater than 55 percent of those earned on an exam is said to be at the 55th percentile.

Percentile amounts shown in ERI reports are a measurement of how much variation there is in the salaries paid to employees in comparison to the mean or median salary for the job. The more variation in the salaries paid to employees, the larger the difference will be between the mean/median and the 10th, 25th, 75th, & 90th percentile values. The more uniform the salaries are for employees in a job, the smaller the difference between the percentile measurements and the mean/median.

"Quartile" is a statistical term that describes three points (or intervals) that divide a group of ordered data points (or observations) into four parts. Each quartile includes 25% of the total number of data points. Depending on how the data points are distributed, the quartile intervals could be close together or very far apart.

The salaries displayed for the percentiles are statistically determined from the salary data of salaries paid for the job in question.Salary data is non - parametric in nature, and therefore does not follow a normal distribution(bell shaped curve) above and below the mean.The percentiles shown are as close as can be statistically determined given the nature of non - parametric data.

ERI Economic Research Institute staff produces all of the industry, job family, and benefits surveys in-house. No aspect of the survey process is outsourced.

ERI assures that all data collected from participating organizations will remain confidential.

For the most reliable salary survey data, we recommend ERI Economic Research Institute's Salary Assessor, which provides consensus salary ranges for more than 8,000 position titles as compiled from available published wage and salary survey sources. The application covers all 298 major cities in North America, expanding to over 9,000 locations when used with the Geographic Assessor (including hundreds of cities in the UK and Europe). Estimates may be adjusted for user inputs of salary planning date, metro area, industry, and company size. The Salary Assessor includes position descriptions for job matching. Benchmark listings for jobs by industry, as well as multiple area listings for a single job in up to 500 metro areas, are provided in summary listings. The Salary Assessor includes reliability statistics.

For those seeking global salary data, we recommend the broader, but less robust, Global Salary Calculator, which provides salary data for more than 45,000 job titles in 68 countries.

Our compensation surveys are available with data cuts by US region. States included in each region are as follows:

• Northeast Region: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont
• Southeast Region: Alabama, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia
• North Central Region: Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming
• South Central Region: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah
• West Coast Region: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Washington

See the ERI Services Agreement.

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