From S&MM Magazine (sorry, no link):
The benefits of an improving economy trickled down to a lot of paychecks in 2006. The 2006 Survey of Exempt Compensation by Business and Legal Reports found 43 out of the 44 benchmarked-exempt positions saw salary increases averaging 3.9 percent.
“Respondents indicated that they were somewhat more optimistic in their pay budgeting for the coming year,” the report stated. “Exempt employees were scheduled to receive merit increases of four percent closely matching the average actual salary increase.”
Among the trends:
* Top gainers for the year: purchasing managers, occupational health and safety specialists, and advertising and promotions managers. All saw average salary gains of more than 8 percent.* Smallest increases for the year: insurance underwriters, purchasing agents, computer programmers, and personnel recruiters. All saw gains of less than 2.2 percent.
* Losing ground: Only one of the 44 benchmarked jobs saw negative numbers for the year. The median salary for wholesale and retail buyers came in at $43,192 – down 0.19 percent from 2005.
* The best industries for salary gains were in healthcare practitioners and technical occupations, management occupations and life, physical and social science occupations.
* Weak salary growth industries: sales, arts and media, food preparation and construction.
Sales is normally a variable compensation position (i.e. commission) so I am not surprised that the salaries did not change much for salespeople.
Purchasing managers received >8% increases? That shocked me. After working for years in capital equipment sales, purchasing became known as the dark side – the antithesis to sales.