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QUESTION:  Where do the numbers for salaries and wages come from?

 

The compensation data in the Assessor Series come from two distinct sources: internal and external surveys. We conduct the research for the internal salary surveys ourselves and we purchase or trade for external survey data with third-party survey vendors. Additionally, ERI has developed a number of data streams to provide data for specific needs.

 

•In-house surveys. ERI conducts industry-specific and job function compensation surveys. For more information, please see www.erieri.com/surveys.

 

•ERI's digitization of public records (e.g., in the US, SEC 8-Ks, 10-Ks, proxies, annual reports, Forms 5500, Forms 990/EZ/PF, etc.). ERI also leases data and digitizes all publicly traded international annual reports that report executive remuneration data.

 

•Third-Party Survey sources. ERI purchases or trades data with other firms engaged in the collection and analysis of compensation data. These sources represent published surveys and unpublished data feeds directly from the databases of these organizations.

 

•Data collected via ERI's patented (March 2005) online interactive salary surveys. With Patent Nos. 6,862,596 and 7,647,322, ERI’s online surveys collect millions of annual inputs. Benefits, cost-of-living, and college entrance hiring rates are collected in addition to competitive salary levels. Participant organizations, incumbent counts, and rates of error are included in Assessors if identified as employer-provided data. Each year, ERI Salary Surveys data becomes more robust and more used.

 

•Government data. This includes National Statistic Offices in the UK, Canada, Europe, etc. In the US, this includes DOL OES, BLS CEW, Census earnings, and other non-copyrighted data sources. OES data, which is typically conservative due to immigration applications, can be found in the Prevailing Wage module of the Geographic Assessor. Please note: Government data sources are not used in primary compensation analyses. Government data sources are reported at the job family level, and ERI publishes data at the individual job level.

 

•Job Analysis. ERI provides job analysis services for organizations that would like to analyze jobs internally. The data from these job analyses feed into the Occupational Assessor and assist in the process of strictly defining occupations into measurable factors before they are included in the salary surveys.

 

To learn more about how data from multiple salary surveys are combined in the Assessor Series, see Assessor Series FAQ #31.

 

Please see your Assessor methodology (available from the Help menu) for more information.