Where to find accurate city/state pay rates 1

[kHz]

There are multiple sources for finding average pay for system administrators, security, programming, etc., such as SANS, annual surveys from the Journal for Unix Administrators, US BLS, and even salarywizard.com (which allows metro searches).

However, how does one know where salarywizard.com gets their data? Do they do a survey that anyone can answer, so it may be possible one person in your city answered and that is their data? As for BLS, SANS, etc., those are averages and they are using the pay from someone in Boston with someone in Denver, which have completely different standards of living.

Where then does one get the right information for quoting a pay rate, either salary or hourly? That happened to me last week when I was asked for a figure for a job. I looked on salarywizard.com for my city and used the 25%-27% percentile for a salary, but am unsure if that was accurate.

How do you deteremine salary/hourly rates?

(And yes, I am aware of other factors like experience, education, location...)

Thanks.

 

[IT4EVR]

One source you may want to look up is Salary.com. I found some good resources there, because it lists salary figures for different IT roles in various cities, etc. It even lists the average cost of living in an area. Even better, you can do a comparison between two different areas for the same job role across the board. They also allow you to enter variable information regarding your past experience and education, whether it is a small company or large.

How accurate is it? Who knows. I found it to be accurate for the area I live in.

Another option is Computerjobs.com. They have a SalaryTicker segment on the site, where they list median salaries, as well as median and low salaries. For example under database administration they might have a salary. I find this one a bit less accurate because it doesn't drill down to geographic location and the survey is based on user feedback. And site members might just by lying about their salary.

The wisest people are those who are smart enough to realize they don't know it all.

 

[chiph]

None of the figures that you see will be 100% accurate, as everyone lies about what they make.

Chip H.


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[kHz]

Oops. I meant 25th-75th percentile.

Another job I was presented with a couple of weeks ago was a contract-to-hire job and the recruiter (who I worked with on another job through his company a few years ago) apologized and said the best he could do is $45/hour.

Then he presented another opportunity last week and they required an amount on their initial form (probably to weed out those who are out of their range.) So I listed $75k-$90k.

So I wanted to know of places to look so I could accurately give a number without low-balling myself or being too high for the market.

That is a good site jrprgrmr. I wonder where they collect the data and as you and chiph said, what is the accuracy of that data? It seems to cover many areas (exprience, education). Plus, they do charge for more detailed reports,so I would surmise the data has to be fairly accurate.

 

[blutekhnd]

You can get an idea from the U.S. census. It will give you the total payroll including benefits and the number of people in the category so you can divide it out. By state, county, or city.

 

[MasterRacker]

I've never found a good solution to this either. The best I've done is to find at least 6 different surveys, toss out the highest one and average the rest.

Computerworld's annual survey is can be filled in by anyone but has always seemed reasonably accurate.

_____
Jeff
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