Cost of Living Comparison by City and State

CostofLiving.net has your city and state covered. Cost of Living.net provides easy to use cost of living comparisons for over 4,500 cities.

For professionals they offer a free demo of Cost of Living Software. The Relocation Assessor provides Cost of Living data for over 7,500 cities including Canada.

View Cost of Living Data in the 100 Most-Requested Cities, providing Local Cost of Living Comparisons by City and State.

More info at: www.costofliving.net

Everything You Should Know about Your Salary – CareerBuilder.com

It happens all the time.

An employee marches into her boss’s office demanding a raise. A college graduate looks forward to a high starting salary because he “deserves” one. A job seeker researches the average salary for a position she’s interested in, expecting to automatically be offered something in the same arena.

Although salary information is one of the most important aspects of finding a new job, it’s also the most under-researched. Unfortunately, with so many salary resources out there, there is always conflicting information and people who always disagree with, or don’t understand, the information presented.

What you, the job seeker, must understand is that the information provided to you via salary information sites should merely be a starting point in your research. What you find as the average salary for a position doesn’t guarantee that is what you will earn; there are too many other factors things that come into play.

To help understand how you can analyze the salary information you find online and apply it to your situation, we’ve brought in compensation expert Jim Brennan, senior associate with the ERI Economic Research Institute, to help.

Q: How do starting salaries compare to median or average salaries?
Starting salaries are usually the lowest amount employers will pay for work, Brennan says. Companies expect new hires to know less about a new position, so they typically start them lower than someone with an established track record.

“Employers generally take care to assure that entry starting rates match the hiring market requirement and that new folks will start at a lower salary than veteran job peers,” he says.

Median salaries are the amount in the center between the lowest and highest paid compensation. If workers in an organization are paid $30,000, $45,000 and $50,000, the median salary at that company would be $45,000.

Average salaries are the product of the sum total of all the salaries, divided by the number of observations. With the above figures, for example, the average salary would be $41,666.

“Median salaries are better measures of ‘normal’ pay, being central values. Averages can swing wildly with the addition of extremely high or low values to the group,” Brennan says. “No matter how high the high, or how low the low, the median is still the middle.”

Read the Full Article at: http://www.careerbuilder.com

Article information provided by SalaryExpert.com

7 Hiring Trends to Follow in 2009 from MSN-CareerBuilder.com

7 Hiring Trends to Follow in 2009…
Source: http://msn.careerbuilder.com

2008 proved to be a difficult year for the job market. Though employers were cautious in the beginning of the year, they still anticipated a slow, yet steady hiring environment with continued job creation through 2008. The market continued to suffer, however, as the U.S. economy weakened and entered into a recession while employers maintained prudence.

While recruitment levels in 2009 are expected to be lower, employers are not out of the mix completely. Instead, they are taking a “wait and see” approach to hiring, according to CareerBuilder.com’s “2009 Job Forecast,” which tracks projected hiring trends for the new year. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, surveyed 3,259 hiring managers and human resource professionals in private sector companies.

Fourteen percent of employers plan to increase their number of full-time, permanent employees in 2009, compared to 32 percent who expected to expand their staff in 2008. Sixteen percent plan to have staff reductions, 56 percent foresee no change and 13 percent of employers are unsure of their hiring plans.

Here are some other key findings from the survey:

• Fifty-six percent of employers plan to raise compensation levels in the next three months. Forty-three percent estimate the average raise to be 3 percent or more, while 12 percent expect a raise of 5 percent or more.
• Staff expansions should be strongest in the Southern and Western regions of the U.S. in 2009, with 18 percent of employers in the South and 14 percent in the West planning to add full-time, permanent employees.
• Nineteen percent of employers in the Northeast expect to reduce staff in 2009, followed by 17 percent in the Midwest.
• Job creation is projected to be the highest in information technology and professional and business services, with 28 percent and 23 percent of employers planning to hire full-time employees in those sectors, respectively.

As employers approach the job market with a cautious attitude, they also plan to utilize the resources already at their disposal. Here are seven major hiring trends to expect from employers in 2009:

Trend No. 1: Bigger paychecks

Despite the fact that many employers are looking for ways to cut costs, they don’t anticipate trimming salaries as a way to do so. Sixty-six percent of employers plan to increase pay for existing employees and one third of hiring managers estimate increasing salaries on initial offers to new employees in 2009.

Trend No. 2: Flexible work arrangements

Companies are catching on to the flexible work arrangements that allow employees more freedom in the office. Thirty-one percent of employers say they plan to provide the following options for workers in 2009: alternate schedules (70 percent); telecommuting (48 percent); compressed workweeks (40 percent); summer hours (19 percent); job sharing (13 percent); and sabbaticals (7 percent).

Trend No. 3: Green jobs

Employers have tried to gain traction using environmentally friendly policies for a while and the New Year shows more of the same. Last year, one-in-ten hiring managers added “green jobs,” which are environmentally conscious positions, compared to 13 percent of employers who plan to add them in 2009.

Read all 7 trends at: http://msn.careerbuilder.com

Career Searches for Those with Lessened Capabilities

Career Searches for Those with Lessened Capabilities…

For those unexpectedly unemployed, ERI’s free job search module of the Occupational Assessor™ eDOT® contains a complimentary application to assist individuals with disabilities in seeking employment, aged workers considering alternative careers, and those returning from the military. Review over 23,000 jobs, matched to 7,000 locations and 12,000,000 employers. Download it free of charge anytime. See why ERI’s employer-supplied data and analyses are unique and how PAQ’s eDOT Skills Project fits with the Assessor Series® methodology.  (PAQ’s eDOT Skills Project is evolving into PAQ’s Competencies Project and, as a consequence, ERI’s Occupational Assessor is to be renamed the Competencies Assessor™. See www.paq.com.)

Other Free Research Links and Products for Researchers

ERI has expanded its provision of free resources to researchers, students, and instructors (with the latter able to receive other complimentary ERI and PAQ materials):

• ERI Distance Learning Center: Online HR courses are provided free of charge for those new to compensation. To date, more than 20,000 individuals have spent an hour or more on the 53 subject matter topics for either certification credit or continuing education.
• Free Global Salary Calculator®: Download a calculator that converts job family data into specific job value estimates (for over 100,000 job titles). See www.erieri.it, www.erieri.co.uk, or any of 190 other countries’ similar URLs.

• Free for Charities: ERI is assisting PAQ Services, Inc., which supplies free, web-based salary planning services using conservative data (typically 15% below competitive norms) for use by nonprofit organizations. See www.paq.com.
• Free International Pay Data: See why Assessor Series datasets and software make ERI unique among those who provide compensation survey data. Click on a dot and review the source data. Review ERI’s C3 job family matrix that allows US specific job methodologies to complement European (and US public entity) job family classification systems.
• Free Looks at Selected Characteristics of Occupations: PAQ and ERI have teamed to make their worker trait measures for over 10,000 specific jobs available to the public. See www.paq.com.
• Download Support: Chat with a seasoned ERI compensation specialist while you download any demo program from our site. We see the “comp world” changing:

Salary Assessor Geographic Assessor Relocation Assessor

Executive Compensation Assessor Nonprofit Comparables Assessor Occupational Assessor

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See more at ERI’s January 2009 Update newsletter.

Executive Pay Drops in the Past 12 Months, According to ERI Economic Research Institute

News – For Immediate Release from ERI Economic Research Institute…

REDMOND, WA – November 2008 – During the most recent 12 months, the average total compensation of the highest paid executives in US publicly-traded companies decreased by 4.0%. This continued the decrease in total compensation during 2008, first evidenced in ERI’s August study of executive compensation. While overall total compensation decreased, three components of pay reported increases: non-equity based incentives (up 17.8%), restricted stock awards (up 24.5%), and pensions (up 45.5%). However, the ultimate value of the restricted stock awards and stock options may be affected by the most recent drop in share prices. Decreases were reported in components of base salaries, stock options, LTIP, and “All Other.”

ERI Economic Research Institute created this index of Executive Compensation 11 years ago. Since its inception in 1997, revenues of the US companies studied increased nearly 7 times faster than the dollar amounts paid to the companies’ highest paid executives, with total revenues increasing by 118% compared to an 18% increase for executive compensation.

Compensation Changes during the Past 12 Months

During the past 12 months, Overall Total Compensation of the highest-paid executive decreased by 4%, while revenues increased nearly 7%, with the average top executive receiving Overall Total Compensation of $17,760,518.

Compensation Changes Since 1997

The highest paid executives of US companies saw an increase in Overall Total Compensation of nearly 18% during the past 11 years, but the compensation components reported have changed significantly during this time period due to SEC reporting requirements.

Comparing Revenue growth to Total Compensation growth during this same period shows the average dollar amount of company revenues increased by nearly 118% as compared to 18% for total compensation. This means the dollar revenues increased nearly 7 times faster than the average dollar amount of the Executive Total Compensation Package.

Read the FULL Press Release at:
ERI Economic Research Institute News Room.

Free Salary Tools and Data from SalaryExpert

SalaryExpert.com has some excellent FREE Salary Tools…

All you have to do is click here on Free Salary Tools then select your job title and location, then click the Search button to receive a sophisticated salary report. Benefits, bonuses, and the cost of living will be factored into your salary analysis.

Salary Data

At SalaryExpert they cover both US and Canadian salary data. They offer free salary data that allows you to quickly look up the prevailing wage for a position by zip code, job description or regional and state information. The salary data covers the US and Canada as well as international positions. SalaryExpert welcomes web developers to add these free salary calculators and our free cost-of-living calculators to their own sites.

> For More Info Visit SalaryExpert.com

Salary Calculators, Surveys and HR Resources from SalaryExpert.com

Salary Calculators and Surveys from One of the Top HR Resources in the USA, UK and Canada… SalaryExpert.com!

Salary Survey Software
This desktop software provides consensus salary survey data for more than 5,000 positions in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. Set individual salaries and update salary structures using this reliable salary survey database. Salary calculations are customized to your inputs for industry, employee experience, planning date, and pay strategy (at, above, or below market rates). Survey sources and reliability statistics are provided for each calculation. This database of compensation surveys is utilized by thousands of organizations, including 85% of the US Fortune 500, to set competitive salaries.

Geographic Salary Data
Research geographic salary differentials to set competitive branch office salary structures for more than 7,000 cities in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe.

Cost of Living Comparisons
Calculate employee relocation allowances and per diem rates for more than 10,000 areas worldwide.

Global Salary Calculator
Research salaries for 100,000 jobs in 200 countries. This is the only salary database available for many hard-to-research international locations.

Executive Compensation Survey
Calculate executive salaries for more than 400 positions. Adjust executive salary calculations for industry, location, pay strategy, and organization size (in revenue/assets). Review competing organizations’ executive salary histories.

Survey Salaries at Non-Profits
Research competitive and reasonable salaries for non-profit executives based on ERI’s survey of more than 2 million tax-exempt organizations’ executive pay.

> Visit SalaryExpert For More Information