By many accounts, 2015 was supposed to be a good year for compensation, in which employers would loosen the purse strings and pay increases would return to more ‘normal’ (or pre-recession) levels. It actually has been, but not quite in the way that some expected.
As evidence, consider the findings of two recent compensation studies from Aon Hewitt and WorldatWork. The two workforce research firms say base pay rate increases this year have been 2.9 percent, and 3.1 percent respectively. Both numbers fall within fractions of a percentage point of what each predicted for 2014.
Adding further support is a separate compensation study by Robert Half International, which looked at compensation trends in five specific industries (accounting and finance; technology; creative and marketing; administrative and office support; and legal). That study finds that base pay increases were 4.1 percent on average in those sectors.