Salary guide shines spotlight on competitive labor environment

Randstad U.S. has released its 2019 Salary Guide, which includes national pay rates for a variety of positions within the engineering, finance and accounting, health care (clinical and non-clinical), human resources, technology, life sciences, manufacturing and logistics and office and administration fields. Updated annually, the Salary Guide is a valuable resource for employers, providing key insights into how their pay rates stack up against the national market.

The guide reveals that nationwide salaries across all of these sectors rose about 3%, which is in line with recent BLS data from the past three years, but not on pace with inflation. This could be a major factor contributing to the increase in people quitting their jobs in search of higher-paying ones. In fact, the latest BLS jobs report lists the number of job leavers (defined as people who voluntarily quit their previous job and immediately began looking for new employment) in December 2018 at 839,000, an increase of 113,000 from December 2017. The fact that workers are quitting their jobs without lining up their next one shows high overall confidence in their abilities to land a new job quickly — which is bad news for employers.

“Simply put, the data we’re seeing around the tighter labor economy means the definition of a ‘competitive’ salary has changed,” said Jim Link, chief human resources officer, Randstad North America. “It’s no longer enough for organizations to pay on par with other companies. Being competitive now means employers must offer salaries and benefits that differentiate themselves in a very tight labor market. Randstad’s Salary Guide provides accurate benchmarks for employers to ensure their salaries are as enticing as possible.”

Data reflected for each industry is organized by job title and level. For executive positions (director and above), salaries are listed by company size as determined by revenue. For all other positions, compensation is determined by average years of experience across three professional levels.