Hello Compensation and HR Professionals from LinkedIn,
(I had to post my question here because LinkedIn limits discussion posts to 200 characters...)
I am a labor economist seeking
advice about salary survey data. I am looking into doing some consulting work helping
individual employees negotiate their salaries, specifically determining what
the market value for their skill sets are.
To do so I need great data. I have
been researching some options and was hoping this community of compensation
professionals could provide some insight as to what data sources are the most
credible and persuasive.
I am looking for data on the
national level, across all industries. I have looked at the following options,
ranked according to how I think compensation professionals would value the
quality of their data. How is this ranking? Which would you recommend I use? Is
there a dataset I am missing?
1.
Mercer, Towers Watson, Radford, Hay: their national benchmark databases cost $20k+ and are out of
my price range.
2.
Economic
Research Institute’s Salary Assessor Tool: 5,600
benchmark classifications, data comes entirely from employer surveys conducted
by ERI and validated against purchased surveys and datasets (Mercer, TW, etc. –
they list which ones they purchase). Includes reliability statistics (standard
error and # of observations) to meet Daubert Challenge criteria in court.
Unlimited access to their costs $1k-3k annually.
3.
Kenexa’s (salary.com)
CompAnalyst Tool: 4,500 benchmark classifications,
data updated monthly. They purchase over 400 surveys each year, but they do not
disclose which surveys. They do assure that all their surveys comply with
World@Work standards and the DOJ/FTC Survey Safe Harbor Guidelines. Costs
$3k-6k annually.
4.
Payscale.com’s
MarketRate Tool: 13,000 benchmark classifications,
data updated daily. Data comes from 4-5 million monthly visitors (employees) who
fill out their surveys. Their data also adheres to World@Word standards. They
benchmark their data with Towers Watson, Mercer, Hay, Radford and find that
they are highly correlated (0.84). Unlimited access to their data costs $3k-6k
annually. – do compensation professionals respect this data?
5.
B LS’s OES
and NCS Surveys: 800 job classifications, survey
conducted every six months, data usually lags one year. Limits pay data to
$90/hour, so higher earners are excluded. Free.
6.
Indeed.com
Salary Search: data from salary information
extracted from 50 million+ job postings over the previous 12 months. Free.
Thanks in advance for your
insights!
