Sick of kicking butt at work and getting microscopic raises? You might consider trying to find a job in Kansas City or Denver in the energy, construction or mining businesses.
That's some of the useful intelligence extracted from the latest Aon Hewitt salary survey that asked 1,147 respondents about their 2014 compensation plans.
The average salary increase for salaried exempt workers will be right around 3 percent, Aon Hewitt found. That's up slightly from the 2.9 percent seen in 2013, and would be the highest annual hike since 2008, when increases were at 3.7 percent.
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"While it appears that pay levels are slowly rebounding, we're still far below pre-recessionary levels of compensation spending as companies continue to hold the line on fixed costs," said Ken Abosch, compensation, strategy and market development leader at Aon Hewitt. "With a sizable talent pool available and increasing global competition for goods and services, companies aren't feeling tremendous pressures to increase base pay to attract top talent. Instead, they are executing on a pay-for-performance vision that rewards employees based on a mix of business and individual results."
It's a different story in Kansas City and Denver, where folks are projecting 3.2 percent increases for 2014.
Another interesting tidbit from the Aon Hewitt survey: Two cities with much higher costs of living —New York and Boston — are expected to fall below the average, at 2.8 percent.
Overall, industries anticipating the highest increases were energy/oil/gas (3.9 percent); construction/engineering (3.5 percent); and mining/milling/smelting (3.3 percent).
The lowest? Education (2.6 percent); health care/medical services (2.5 percent); and government (2.2 percent).
Aside from the inching up seen in the average pay raise, Aon said most companies continue to hoard their dollars to reward top performers more handsomely as the economic slowly blooms again.
The survey found that variable pay plans, designed to incentivize employees to work harder and fast, are more popular than ever. While 78 percent of companies offered these in 2004, today 90 percent do.
These companies "expect to spend 12 percent of payroll on variable pay for salaried exempt employees in 2014." A decade ago, employers generally set aside 9.5 percent of payroll for the variable pay plans.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
