New Tool Delivers Pay Data on Demand

It’s a difficult conversation to have – are you paying your contingents right?  Salaries are never doled out evenly across the board, even for contingents doing the same job. Recruiters love to exchange war stories on topics like these and others: working with companies that pay below market but want the highly skilled worker, the candidates who refuse to divulge what they made in their last job but want an increase, etc.  Recruiters aside, discussing compensation can bring out the worst in many of us.

Oddly, though, everyone wants to know what to pay a worker – temporary or direct hire. In general, the need for salary information is very specific; a registered nurse is paid differently from an aircraft engineer. Going further, a registered nurse in Little Rock, Ark., is paid differently from a nurse in Miami. So how does an employer know what pay rate is appropriate?

Say hello to Staffing Industry Analysts’ Pay Rate RangeFinder. The Excel workbook contains data on 820 detailed occupations for 403 metropolitan areas, allowing you to view roughly 200,000 pay range profiles. A bonus: An interactive US map also displays data by state. 

Staffing firms and their clients can plan for the future given the much-discussed war for talent. The tool provides wage ranges to enable you to compare salaries over time. Are salaries going up or down for specific skill sets? You can analyze the long-term employment trends for your target occupations and geographies. With this tool, companies can know where they stand in the marketplace — whether they are paying right for a particular occupation. “When negotiating bill rates with clients or pay rates with candidates, it pays to equip yourself with precise wage data from a credible source. The Pay Rate Rangefinder is especially powerful for this purpose because it relies on government surveys that reach 1.2 million employers covering every metropolitan area in the US,” says ZIv Tepman, author of the tool and research associate at Staffing Industry Analysts. 

The tool also points to areas of opportunity, things a company – including staffing firms – can do to arbitrage costs. Maybe it’s moving a highly skilled candidate from one city to another with a lower cost of living, allowing you to throw in a raise and bonus to sweeten the pot. The tool charts the compensation landscape, affording the opportunity to take strategic moves that can help with retention.  

Hiring and managing workers in today’s climate is tough. The Pay Rate RangeFinder enables you to get serious about competing for and winning the best — by paying them right.