| by Dirk Dusharme
The one thing that can honestly be said about salary surveys is that they have numbers--lots and lots of numbers, and lots and lots of tables. How you use these numbers and graphics largely depends upon whether you're an optimist or pessimist, which in turn depends upon how much money you earn compared to others. This is why salary surveys are so popular. Who doesn't want to know where they stand in relation to their peers?
In our experience, generic salary tables, such as those shown here, should only be used as a rough estimate as to how much you should be earning. There are just too many variables--age, education, years of experience, industry, region and so forth--that can affect your income for tables to be used as more than a general guide. To help make them as useful as possible, we have provided several different views into the salary data to give you a better feel for what you should be earning. It's probably best to use figure 3 on page 58 as a starting point. Then browse some of the other tables to see how salaries shift according to region, years of experience and gender. After that, you have to use your intuition as to whether your salary seems to be in line with your industry's average. Your best bet when trying to find more accurate comparative salaries is to first go to your union (if you're in a union), or your industry association office or credit union--they often have industry/title-specific salary survey data that are unique to your region. If those options aren't available, then this survey, as well as the annual survey conducted by the American Society for Quality, are good starting points.
Not enough can be said about this. Put simply, knowledge equals money. If you're new to the workforce, then this is all the information you need to know: The more education you get, whether college, vocational or industry certificates, the more you're going to earn. Just spending two extra years after high school in order to earn a vocational or associate's degree can mean around a 10-percent salary increase, and it gets better from there. See figure 6 on page 59.
If you're already working full time, supporting a spouse and 2.5 children, and going to school isn't an option, at least consider some sort of industry certificate. In the case of those involved in quality, one of the many American Society for Quality certificates or a Six Sigma belt will affect your personal bottom line. For instance, if you look at figure 7 on page 60, you can see that an ASQ certificate can mean a 5- to 8-percent increase in salary. Strangely, as we have mentioned each year, we can't explain why having an ASQ certificate should appear to negatively affect ISO coordinators or technicians. We've seen this three years running and it makes no sense. Although we're just guessing, this may have something to do with a higher prevalence of ASQ certificates in lower-paying industries than higher-paying ones.
Six Sigma training is still a hot topic and worth pursuing even if your company doesn't have a Six Sigma program. The analytical skills are invaluable for quality professionals and may give you the edge you need during your next job search.
In figure 8 on page 60 you can see the difference in average salaries for those with Six Sigma certificates within a few job titles. While we feel that this is a fairly accurate indication of the importance of Six Sigma training, it must be noted that this training may be valued only in companies that have a Six Sigma program. Because our survey didn't ask whether the respondent's company had a Six Sigma program or not, we aren't really able to draw too strong a conclusion. It stands to reason, though, that such knowledge is valued.
Speaking of job searching, both this year's and last year's survey show that 29 percent of companies have cut their quality departments in the last five years. The good news for those of you in that 29 percent is that 39 percent of companies have increased their quality departments. Any extra training you have will help you get your foot in the door.
The disparity in pay between men and women always comes up, and for good reason. No matter how we cut up our data, we can't find a slice that doesn't show some sort of gender bias--and usually a sizable one. Whether by education, age or years of experience, there's almost always a difference. The two exceptions to this that have appeared in all of our surveys is that gender pay differences in the western United States are less pronounced and sometimes even nonexistent compared to other parts of the country (see figure 4 on page 58), and that, across all regions, male and female executives under the age of 30 seem to be more closely matched.
There could be a reason (other than discrimination) for the pay difference. Some suggest that women work fewer hours and are less committed to completely immersing themselves in a job, whether out of choice (there is more to life than work) or necessity (got to get home to take care of the kids). The hypothesis is that men are more likely to work 60- to 80-hour weeks. Others suggest that women may be more attracted to jobs that traditionally pay less (a school teacher vs. an engineer, for instance). These are possibilities that we will try to explore in next year's survey with the addition of a few new questions.
Meanwhile, Quality Digest would be very interested in hearing opinions from human-resources people or others involved in hiring as to why we consistently see such a difference.
The West and Northeast consistently show higher average salaries than the rest of the country, which may lead some to quickly start shoving their skivvies, jogging shoes and cat into a suitcase and heading for California (see figure 5 below). But, while New York and San Diego may pay considerably more than Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for the same job, the cost of living is also much higher.
If you anticipate being transferred or are looking to move to another part of the United States for a new job, you need to consider more than salary. You need to look at a regional cost of living index, many of which are available on the Web simply by searching for "cost-of-living calculator." You may find that relocating from Atlanta to San Francisco isn't worth it, even with a 25-percent increase in pay. In fact, you would need to almost double your salary to break even. The inverse is also true. You could move from San Diego to Lubbock, Texas, take a significant cut in salary and still be able to buy a home and sock money away for your child's education. Of course, the surfing isn't as good.
As we reported in last year's salary survey, it isn't unusual for new hires to earn more than those with the same experience at the same company. The reason posited was that new hires are generally hired to fill a skill set that the company needs or wants to upgrade, and companies are willing to pay a premium for those skills. It's not unusual for new hires to be offered a job at 10- or 20-
percent more money than what they earned at their last job. At the same time, most companies limit the size of raises given to employees. The result is that a qualified worker can make more money job-hopping than he or she can by staying in one place… to a point.
As you can see in figure 1 on page 57, the trend line for time at company vs. salary is shallower than years of experience vs. salary. One interpretation of this is that salary increases at a company are typically capped and you can only expect a fairly steady but moderate salary increase over time. With increased years of experience, on the other hand, your value increases much more quickly--but only if you change jobs often enough to take advantage of that increased worth.
That said, there traditionally have been advantages to staying with a company, usually in the form of retirement benefits or job security due to seniority. In those cases, staying with a company for the long term may be more beneficial than cutting short a pension plan, even if your pay is somewhat less than what it could be.
Pension plans are largely going the way of the Dodo, however, and most have been supplanted by company contributions into an employee's individual retirement account (IRA) or 401(k). In that case, since any money contributed to those accounts is yours, there should be no effect when moving from one company to the next. When considering a job change, the question then turns to how much a new company would pay (if anything) into that type of account.
Quality Digest contacted 34,272 subscribers by e-mail and invited them to take the salary survey online. We also included a survey form in the April 2006 issue of the magazine instructing readers to participate online or to fax in the survey. To increase the response rate, participants were entered into a random drawing for an Apple iPod. From both sources, we received a total of about 2,700 responses. Weeding out invalid, duplicate or incomplete responses, there were 2,594 valid submissions.
More than 85 percent of the respondents indicated that they were quality professionals. The actual percentage is probably higher because many respondents may have generic titles, such as technician, yet perform a quality function. For the rough breakdown of respondents, see figures 10 and 11 below.
Dirk Dusharme is Quality Digest's editor in chief.
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