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ERI has collected information on all cities with 10,000 or more in population, matched to ZIP/postal codes. Cities and towns of much smaller population as well as neighborhoods within city limits have been added for over 30 years, based upon subscriber requests.  The Salary Assessor segregates wage/salary survey data into divisions of no less than one five-digit ZIP Code.  The reason for this limitation is that there exists, to ERI's knowledge, no better, more precise segregation of market pricing data.

 

In cases where a specific job in is not surveyed in a specific city, ERI will utilize pay relationships of nearby comparable or contiguous areas in its analysis of geographic pay patterns.  The normative data from these sources permit us to derive geographic pay differential patterns which can be applied to the specific job which was not surveyed.  This concept is based on the principle of relative value patterns of jobs of nearby comparable or contiguous areas.  Thus, the wage values ERI shows for the job not surveyed is calculated based on the same relative value of the job in question to other jobs as they exist in comparable/contiguous areas. Over the years, the accuracy of extending the relative value to a specific job not surveyed has been demonstrated to be quite accurate. The accuracy has been demonstrated by later wage surveys which have included the job in question, individual wage input to our Internet site, ERI analysis data gathering, ERI monitoring of job boards, job postings, FLSA analysis reports, and company and customer feedback.

 

ERI has worked for over 30 years validating the economic studies first created by our Founding Director.  Distance and populace as compared to those nearby areas where salary structures are known have proved to be reliable economic factors.  

 

ERI is often asked if cost of living has a relationship with pay.  The answer is sometimes, however, ERI does not include cost of living as an economic value in our economic studies for geographic pay for areas that are too small to be surveyed. For the statistician, the correlation between cost of living and cost of labor is positive.  This means that cost-of-living structures generally tend to move in the same direction as wage and salary structures for the same area.  

 

The data for the smallest cities and towns, too small to be surveys, are based on economic studies of contiguous areas and should be utilized as such.  However, ERI has considerable confidence in the local market data presented.  And for our subscribers who must use this data, please note that ERI may be the only source of  data for the majority of the North American cities and towns we profile. In the last few years, our economic studies have been checked against the US DOL OES salary survey.