Free Salary Data Resource

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just released its May 2007 Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, which provides mean and median wage data for more than 800 occupations across 375 MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas). 

This is essentially a free salary survey, and one which I have found it to be a good supplemental source of data.  My experience is that it syncs up well with other sources that cost me a lot of money, and it has the additional benefit of covering metro areas and occupations that are not well covered by other professionally published compensation surveys.  I have found it particularly valuable for its wide range of unskilled and semi-skilled "hourly" occupations, which I often have trouble locating in other sources. Further, it can be a limited but helpful source in examining geographic differentials for select groups of jobs.

So, something very good created with our tax dollars ... and a no-cost addition to your bag of tricks.  Cheers!

Post update:  Just want to add to the body of this post - a couple of savvy readers (thanks, Carla and R) have noted some limitations to this data that are worth mentioning here.  First, there are no "levels" for any of the jobs covered.  In other words, there is an Accountant, but not a Junior/Associate Accountant and not a Senior Accountant.  One level only.  Second, the data is not broken out by company size.  For most jobs, I think that this is OK - but I do not use this source for management jobs for this reason.  Otherwise - a gold mine of free salary data.  Enjoy!

Comments

[Andres V Acosta, SPHR]

Free AND no spam ... a rare combination.

[Ann Bares]

Excellent point, Andres!

[Carla]

Ann,

Am I missing something or am I right that wages for a job are not broken out by experience levels like seniors, intermediates in this survey? Do other surveys have these levels?

Thanks,

Carla,

[Ann Bares]

Carla:

You are correct in your observation. That is one downside of the BLS survey, that none of the positions covered are addressed at more than one level (i.e., Engineer 1, 2, 3 or Accountant Associate, Accountant Senior, etc.) Many, but not necessarily all, professionally published surveys will break out non-management jobs in this manner, to help us define career paths.

I typically assume that the level presented by BLS is a "mid" or "intermediate" level (although the real truth is that it represents "all" levels), when I am using to address multi-level jobs.

[RMSJr]

I've been using this specific data set for the last several years to compare company aggregate data to a reliable market benchmarket. Over time, I've watched the data set migrate in it's reliability. My only other issue is that it does not report company size. However, if you are in tune with your local marketplace, this is a free gold mine of reliability and an easy sell to employees as they so often quote the CPI rate, same source, same resource, same reliability.

[Ann Bares]

R-

Thanks for the comment and for sharing your experience. I'd be interested to hear a little more about the migration in reliability that you've observed, if you'd be willing to share it here. You are also correct in pointing out the limitation that there is no reporting by company size. For this reason, I do not use the source for management jobs, where pay does tend to be closely related to company size. Probably something I should have pointed out, but glad that you have taken the time to note it.

[RMSJr]

My reliability comment is more anecdotal than based on collected and analyzed data trends. Maybe for the next iteration, I will start capturing that element as well.

3) The relative standard error (RSE) is a measure of the reliability of a survey statistic. The smaller the relative standard error, the more precise the estimate.