Number of Jobs in U.S. Projected to Grow, but Where Is Yours? - ERI Economic Research Institute

Number of Jobs in U.S. Projected to Grow, but Where Is Yours?

Redmond, WA – The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported last week that total employment is projected to increase by 10 percent from 2008 to 2018. Even though the Baby Boomers are working longer and delaying retirement, they can’t hold off forever – jobs created when current incumbents need to be replaced are projected to be more than double the number of openings due to economic growth in this 10-year period.

Jobs continue to shift from the goods-producing sector of the economy to services, the source of 96 percent of the increase in total employment. The two industries expected to have the largest employment growth are professional and business services (4.2 million) and health care and social assistance (4.0 million).

While construction employment is projected to increase slightly, manufacturing and mining jobs will drop. At the end of the ten years, the goods-producing sector is expected to account for only about 13 percent of jobs.

However, if you are one of the well over 15 million Americans out of work or one of the additional 9 million involuntarily working part time, you may be looking for some guidance on where to find employment right now.

The top ten occupational groups with the largest number of job openings include cashiers, retail salespersons, restaurant wait staff, customer service representatives, registered nurses, food preparation workers, general office clerks, laborers, elementary school teachers, and stock clerks. View BLS’ entire list of 30 at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t07.htm.

But the key to finding employment is matching your skills to a specific job in your geographic area. ERI Economic Research Institute is offering some free help, giving job-seekers access to a software program often used by Human Resources professionals to match job applicant abilities and interests to the requirements for actual jobs. You can create a list of organizations that employ people in the jobs you select, along with links to online job postings, all within your commuting range.

ERI’s founding director Dr. David Thomsen says, “Job search is all about minimizing rejection. ERI's software identifies jobs that fit and local employers posting openings for these jobs, while providing contact names, emails, addresses, and phone numbers. Because we want to increase the odds of a successful job search in these tough times, ERI is making this program available at no cost.”

Download the free Job Search version of ERI’s Occupational Assessor at:
http://www.erieri.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=LG.SingleDemo&ID=eDOT&source=salarySurveys to assist you in these tasks:

• Identify your education, achievements, skills, address, and any physical and/or mental limitations;
• Review the jobs found nationally or locally for which you qualify;
• Generate a list of employers within commuting radius that are most likely to have the positions that match your qualifications; and
• Review a list of job board postings by matched employer, area, and/or industry to see if any of these employers have a job available now.

Enhanced versions of the software for consultants and vocational experts are also available for purchase at: http://www.erieri.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=EDOT.Main.

About ERI Economic Research Institute:
ERI Economic Research Institute, Inc. is a leader in compensation and job content information. With data gathered from online surveys and an extensive survey library, ERI’s staff of 60 researchers provides subscribers with assessments of salaries, relocation cost, cost-of-living comparisons, and executive compensation. ERI’s compensation databases contain 20 years of collected data, covering the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries throughout Europe. ERI subscribers include the American Red Cross, Alaska Airlines, Monster Worldwide, Aon Consulting, Honda, Amtrak, Adidas America, Inc., IRS, CIA, and United Nations. ERI’s products include the Salary Assessor®, Geographic Assessor®, Relocation Assessor®, Executive Compensation Assessor®, Nonprofit Comparables Assessor™, and Occupational Assessor™ (eDOT®) software. For more information about ERI and its products, visit http://www.erieri.com.

Five Myths about Charitable Giving to Know before You Give! - ERI Economic Research Institute

Five Myths about Charitable Giving to Know before You Give from ERI Economic Research Institute...

#1 – Most charitable donations go to help the poor.

In 2008, total charitable giving in the US was estimated at about $308 billion, actually down almost 6% from 2007, according to Giving USA. Of this total, only 9% went to Human Services charities. These are the charities that have been the first to report increasing needs for services and a slower growth in contributions in hard economic times.

The biggest proportion of 2008 contributions – 35% -- went to religious organizations. The second highest sector to receive contributions was education, at 13% of the total.

So the organizations that you most likely think of as charities are really getting only a small portion of charitable donations.

#2 – Most charities get grants from foundations.

Individuals contributed 75% of the US total giving in 2008. Most charities receive none or only a small proportion of their revenues from foundation and corporations. Looking at the national total of charitable giving, foundations gave 13% and corporations only 5%. Donations from individuals are the major source of revenue for most charities.

#3 – When tax time comes, I can deduct my donations.

Maybe. First, the contribution must be to an organization that has been given tax exempt status under Internal Revenue Code 501 (C )(3). Before taking that deduction, the IRS wants you to verify that status. ERI Economic Research Institute makes the basic information on IRS status and also copies of the Form 990, the information form filed annually by larger nonprofits, available at www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com.

Additionally, you have to itemize your deductions, rather than take the standard deduction on your return. Only about 30% of US taxpayers decide to itemize their deductions. There are different rules if you are donating something other than cash as well as limits on how much of your income you can donate and take a deduction. Plus you may be required to keep records. Check out everything you need to know in IRS Publication 526, Charitable Contributions, available at www.irs.gov.

#4 – I should only give to charities that say all my money will be used for programs and services.

Think about it -- how will the charity locate the people it is trying to serve? Does the organization have an office, staff, managers, computers, telephones, etc.? Every organization has overhead and requires some general support to be able to operate. When a charity guarantees that all money will go to the needy recipients, the next question should be who is paying for necessary overhead? Obviously, you may not want to support huge executive salaries and plush offices, but some expenditures are clearly needed. Again, check out what the organization reported in various expense categories and for its programs and services on its Form 990, available at www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com.

#5 – There are so many good causes that I should give donations to as many as possible, even though the amounts will be small.

There are over a million charities in the US and the number grows every year. It is also hard to distinguish which ones are the best, based on their names, professionally-designed mailers, attention-grabbing pictures, and aggressive phone solicitors. Before you give your credit card number to a telemarketer or put a check in the mail in response to a letter, check the Form 990 for the most accurate portrait of the organization.

Making a small donation means that the organization will be spending a large proportion of it processing the gift. A more effective use of your money is to carefully select five to ten charities and make larger contributions. Then you will be able to have a bigger impact on the organization and also keep track of its progress and accomplishments. This approach should also cut down on the additional solicitations you will receive during the year!

Then Choose the Right Charities

You work hard for your money – before making charitable donations, make sure the money you donate to charities is also working hard. Here are some tips to help you make the right choice on the charities to support:

• Have a personal connection. Give to an organization that you know and trust, or where someone you trust works or volunteers or has used a service or participated in an activity.

• Review the Form 990. Larger charities have to file an annual information return called IRS Form 990. You can find all the forms filed since 2000 at www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com. Although the form looks daunting (It is a tax form!), you can easily review the lines that report total revenue (How big is the organization?), net assets (Is there money in the bank?), money spent on fundraising (Is it a high proportion of the money from direct public support?), description of activities, and compensation of the top-paid people.

• Check the charity’s website. The address for the website can be found on the first page of Form 990 and most charities have them these days. Does the information on the website match the information on the Form 990? Does it match the information that you have been told by the fundraiser that called or the letter you received?

• Visit the charity watchdog groups. There are several groups that rate charities – see Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator,org), the BBB Alliance for Wiser Giving (www.give.org) or the American Institute of Philanthropy (www.charitywatch.org). Not all charities are rated and the watchdogs use different criteria, but what they say may help you interpret the Form 990 and inform your giving decisions.


About ERI
ERI Economic Research Institute is a leader in compensation and performance metric information. Based in Redmond, Washington, ERI provides salary survey and cost-of-living research reports and software to over 10,000 worldwide organizations. With information gathered from online surveys and an extensive survey library, ERI provides subscribers with assessments on salary, relocation, the cost of living, and executive compensation. ERI's data covers the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and numerous countries in the European Union.. Its industry-leading Executive Compensation Assessor® software reports executive cash compensation based on information from private executive pay surveys, as well as publicly reported information for 6,500 US, 1,150 Canadian, and 2,300 UK and EU publicly traded organizations. For analysis of tax-exempt organizations' executive pay, see ERI's Nonprofit Comparables Assessor™ software representing 19,000,000 measures derived from over 800,000 organizations.

Visit www.erieri.com to learn more about ERI and to review its other talent management and compensation indices.

Ailing States Retirees May Want to Avoid - As Seen in U.S. News

By Philip Moeller, As Seen in U.S. News...

If you're nearing retirement or are considering relocating to a different state any time in the next several years, you need to do some careful thinking about how the recession and housing downturn have affected the finances

of different states. The National Governors Association says it will take a decade for states to recover. Many states have had little choice but to raise taxes and fees in the teeth of the recession, and further increases are likely. Even so, public services will decrease, especially after one-time funds from the federal stimulus program stop flowing to the states.

These financial dilemmas will affect the quality of residents' lives, and could change your thinking about the place you'd like to spend your retirement years.

The Pew Center for the States recently released a study listing what it judged to be the country's 10 most imperiled states:

• California
• Arizona
• Rhode Island
• Michigan
• Oregon
• Nevada
• Florida
• New Jersey
• Illinois
• Wisconsin

California is the unfortunate poster child for states that have been effectively bankrupted during the past few years. Pew ranked all 50 states using six factors that it said had played major roles in California's spiraling financial decline: 1) high mortgage foreclosure rates; 2) worsening unemployment; 3) loss of state revenues; 4) the percentage size of the state's budget shortfall; 5) a legislative supermajority requirement that makes it hard to enact tax and budget cuts, and 6) a Pew ranking of how poorly each state managed its money. California had the high score of 30—a bad thing in this ranking—and scores in the other nine states ranged from 28 in Arizona down to 22 in Wisconsin. Pew noted, however, that many other states also were hurting and, in fact, the national average state score was 17.

[See Best Places to Retire.]

While Pew focused on the more troubled states, it's worth noting the 10 states that had the lowest, or best, scores on its ranking system:

• Wyoming (6)
• Iowa (7)
• Nebraska (7)
• Montana (9)
• North Dakota (9)
• Texas (9)
• Pennsylvania (11)
• Utah (11)
• South Dakota (12)
• West Virginia (12)

Of these states, Wyoming, Texas, and South Dakota have no state income tax. RetirementLiving.com has a detailed look at the various taxes levied by each state. To help provide a rough guide of how far your dollars will go in other places, SalaryExpert.com has a free set of city cost-of-living reports that include comparisons with other cities.

There are, of course, many other reasons why a location might or might not be attractive. But it can't hurt to see which places might be most friendly to your finances.

Analyzing and Using Salary Survey Data Webinar - ERI Distance Learning Center

ERI Distance Learning Center Presents...

Analyzing and Using Salary Survey Data Webinar
Nov 17, 2009, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM (Pacific)

This introductory webinar will discuss practical guidelines that may be used for identifying, selecting, analyzing, and using market data to complete essential tasks in determining external competitiveness and establishing an effective market-based pay program. The importance of communicating the compensation program effectively will also be discussed, and practical tips will be provided to assist you in "getting the message" to your employees so that they may understand and, ultimately, buy into the program. Full description

Click Here to Sign Up

Learning Objectives:

• Define your organization's compensation philosophy and market pricing objectives

• Identify and select salary survey sources

• Understand the importance of matching benchmark jobs

• Interpret salary survey data

• Determine market rates and the competitiveness of current pay

• Develop salary ranges

• Adjust or update a pay structure

• Communicate the compensation plan

Attendees Receive:

Salary Assessor® Compensation Software: You will receive a free demo edition of ERI's Salary Assessor software, which provides the most extensive analysis of competitive rates in existence.

Webinar PowerPoint Presentation: Interested attendees may save the PowerPoint presentation from this webinar for use in staff training.

CBP/CCP/GRP/WLCP: This webinar qualifies for recertification credit for the Certified Compensation Professional (CCP®), Certified Benefits Professional ® (CBP) and Global Remuneration Professional (GRP®) and Work-Life Certified Professional (WLCP®) designations granted by WorldatWork Society of Certified Professionals. For more information on recertification, visit the WorldatWork Society website at www.worldatworksociety.org.

JCA: Earn 1.5 hours of JCA credit toward your Job and Compensation Analyst credential.

Presenter:

Debbie Lambert, CCP, CBP, GRP

Debbie is Managing Director for ERI Salary Surveys and Abbott, Langer Association Surveys. With more than 25 years of experience in compensation and benefits consulting, she has designed and implemented a wide range of compensation programs in industries including transportation, energy, managed care services, health care, and the public sector. Debbie pioneered the field of compensation by being the first compensation professional at organizations such as FedEx, Electronic Data Systems, and Kemper National Services. Experienced in all aspects of compensation and benefits design, Ms. Lambert holds the WorldatWork Society of Certified Professionals' Certified Compensation Professional, Certified Benefits Professional, and Global Remuneration Professional credentials. Prior to joining ERI, Debbie was an independent compensation and benefits consultant and was previously employed as the Senior Compensation Consultant/Manager for Harrah's Entertainment. She has been a member of the SHRM Consultants Forum and has served on the boards of the South Florida Compensation & Benefits Association and the Mid-South Compensation Association. Ms. Lambert holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Memphis.

Click Here to Sign Up

To contact the ERI Distance Learning Center, please email contact.dlc@erieri.com or call 800-627-3697.

The ERI Distance Learning Center is the online training website for ERI Economic Research Institute. Since 1987, ERI has provided salary survey and cost-of-living information to thousands of compensation professionals worldwide.

Online HR Courses
Need more recertification credits?

55 online courses available.

ERI Distance Learning Center

8575 164th Ave NE, Suite 100

Redmond, WA 98052

USA

Salary Increases and Employing Staff in 2010 from ERI Economic Research Institute

Salary Increases in 2010
Association and consulting firms have released their 2010 salary increase surveys. To summarize, they forecasted 3.75% in 2009,believe 1.85% occurred, and now knowledgeably forecast 2.65% for 2010! ERI, in contrast, has suspended its Salary Increase Survey for 2010, substituting 128 industry specific blog-like websites, plus 128unique ERI Salary Surveys mirroring that number. Our mid-year 2009survey input found over one-half of our subscribers not yet planning for 2010 or, better put, not considering competitive pressures to be the criteria for 2010 decisions; rather, they are finding the unique economic circumstances of their own entities to be determinative.

Employing Staff in 2010
Employers and the media are beginning to talk about an increase in staffing, including new comp analysts. Many professionals can duplicate ERI’s research efforts – required for a Daubert Challenge – given enough time, effort, and expense. But that’s the point! We save you time, effort, and expense. Also, if you bring on new analysts, don’t forget ERI’s Distance Learning Center at www.eridlc.com; it was designed to train new comp staff.

Learn more at: ERI Economic Research Institute

Economic Outlook for 2010 from ERI Economic Research Institute

ERI’s (Economic Research Institute) view is that the US is at the bottom of an L-shaped recovery and, when job losses stop, a sustainable, not “dig a hole, fill a hole,” slow economic recovery will occur under a heavy social burden.

SSA DI (early retirement) rolls are above 10% of the working age populace (only 12,000/year return to work); unemployment is also above 10%; welfare payment values (including health care coverage) are higher than competitive unskilled wages (discouraging the pursuit of employment); minimum wage rates are rising
substantially (without inflation, there are only so many employer dollars for payrolls); health care costs rise unabated; and neighboring countries’ workers are flooding into America’s lower paid jobs.

Contrarily, ERI has received few bankruptcy notices from subscribers. Most organizations have cut staff, reduced payrolls, and managed revenue downturns in very prudent manners. The results are slimmed down and potentially more profitable entities poised for an economic turnaround.

For more info from ERI visit: http://www.erieri.com

Three (3) Salary Resource Websites for Personal or Business

Here are 3 Highly Recommended Salary and Cost of Living Resources for Personal or Business Use...

1.) SalaryExpert.com: Providing HR professionals and employees with choices for finding the most accurate and up-to-date compensation information, SalaryExpert has a range of salary tools, salary surveys and products to fit your specific needs.

2.) ERIERI.com: Salary Survey Data with Sources. ERI Economic Research Institute compiles the most robust job competency, cost-of-living, executive compensation and salary surveys (over 565,000 organizations' data) available.

3.) CostofLiving.net: Provides easy to use cost of living comparisons for over 4,500 cities. View Cost of Living and Salary Data in the Most-Requested Cities, providing Local Cost of Living Comparisons and Salaries by City and State.

Get an Extra Bonus... Free Salary Tools:
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Distance Learning Center Online HR Courses from ERI Economic Research Institute

The ERI Distance Learning Center (DLC)...

Train yourself and your staff online at www.eridlc.com. ERI provides over 50 HR courses devoted to compensation and benefits education. Online courses provide you more in-depth training on Assessor Series software features. The Distance Learning Center offers recertification credits for maintaining your PHR/GPHR/SPHR certification from SHRM, your CBP certification, CCP certification, or GRP certification from WorldatWork Society of Certified Professionals, or your CPA license through NASBA-approved accounting courses. College students, job analysts, and compensation specialists can receive an advanced certification by earning ERI's Job and Compensation Analyst credential.

Check out the ERI Distance Learning Center's Free Resources:

Course Catalog

Would you like a free copy of the ERI Distance Learning Center online course catalog to be sent to you through the mail? This free catalog contains descriptions for all Distance Learning Center online courses (including those still under development). This resource is designed to help you plan your HR staff training, continuing education, and career development. You can also print out your own copy, using this link to our Course Catalog PDF. Click here to order a hardcopy to be sent to you through the mail.

DLC Wizard HR Software

The DLC Wizard^® is a free HR software program that provides an unparalleled interactive e-learning experience. It automatically downloads 6 free HR software DLC Wizard is also fast! It frees you from browser and system problems by loading all online course materials automatically. You can download this software for free from the instructions page of the courses that use it. If your company has firewalls or you have a slow Internet connection, please send an email to: info.eri@erieri.com and request that a free DLC Wizard CD-ROM be mailed to you.

Business Dictionary

Find business definitions to over 2,000 compensation and benefits terms in the Distance Learning Center online business glossary. You can quickly find an HR term by using the Search field, or by selecting the letter with which the term begins. This free online business dictionary lets you search for a business term within all the online dictionary term names and definitions. In addition, each Distance Learning Center online business course provides a course index that lists HR terms used throughout the course. This index will link you to the business glossary for definitions, as well as show you where the HR term appears in other DLC e-learning material.

Employment Law

Read United States and Canadian employer laws that apply to compensation and benefits administration in the U.S. and Canada. These HR regulations deal with equal pay, affirmative action, prevailing wages, immigrant employees, retirement funds, cafeteria plans, and more. This resource of HR codes and employment regulations supplements ERI Distance Learning Center online courses. This page also provides a link to useful international employment references, including: country profiles, cost-of-living data, language data, weather and climate information, exchange rates, capital cities, hardship and danger allowance pay, and international schools.

Job Description Software

This job analysis software provides 9,000+ position descriptions for 20,000+ position titles. Using the same construct as the Department of Labor's Dictionary of Occupational Titles (now out of print), this job description software has added new job titles, updated job descriptions, and 99 worker characteristics (including physical, cognitive, temperaments, and more). This job analysis software also includes filters to help you find alternate positions for individuals based on their interests, skills, and physical or mental abilities. Based on your inputs, the Occupational Assessor (eDOT^®) will provide an alternate jobs list that includes job availability statistics for positions in selected geographic areas. That way you'll know if viable employment actually exists for the individual. If so, the Occupational Assessor will provide you with a list of potential employers, including contact names, addresses, and telephone numbers. This makes this job analysis software an unparalleled aid for those involved in career development, Human Resources planning, outplacement, disability case administration, or vocational rehabilitation. To download a free demo of this compensation software, click here.

Crosswalk to ERI Software and DLC Courses

Find out which ERI Distance Learning Center online courses teach about the ERI Assessor Series^® compensation software to which you subscribe using the our Software/Course Crosswalk. Interactive Exercises found in many DLC online courses provide e-learning tutorials on beginning to advanced ERI Assessor Series research techniques.

Learn more at the: ERI Distance Learning Center

View Salaries by City, State, Job Titles and Positions at SalaryExpert.com

SalaryExpert's Free Salary Information...

PAQ gathers job data (jobs of interest), an indication of whether a respondent is an incumbent (asking for years in job), earnings, and then 3 of the 99 work measures found in eDOT. This site and collection construct exists to assist those disabled to identify jobs that they might satisfactorily perform with existing mental or physical residual capacities. This is the only such effort ongoing in America where worker characteristics for specific jobs are captured...

Salaries by City and State
List of salaries, the 100 most-requested cities on SalaryExpert's free Salary Calculator. This list is updated daily!

Salary Survey Data by Job Title
List of the 50 most-requested job titles on SalaryExpert's free Salary Calculator in the last 30 days. This list is updated daily!

Job Position Titles/Salaries
193 popular job titles for which SalaryExpert has salary survey data. Salaries are reported at the National level for all industries.

> Learn more at SalaryExpert.com

Seven (7) Free Salary Resources from SalaryExpert.com

Here are Seven (7) FREE Resources from SalaryExpert.com...
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5. SalaryExpert Blog Keeping YOU Informed on Timely Compensation and Salary Issues

6. Education and Career Planning Center Tools and resources to help accomplish your educational and career goals.

7. Global Salary Calculator provides salary data for over 100,000+ job titles in 200+ countries.

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If you're looking to generate more traffic for your site, increase brand visibility or communicate with your readers more effectively, adding SalaryExpert syndicated content can play a major role in growing and developing your online properties. SalaryExpert offers a variety of interactive content modules that can be easily tailored and added to your site.

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Enhance and Advance Your Career and Salary with an Online MBA Degree

Prepare for the new business environment or enhance your existing skills and salary with an online business degree. Online MBA opportunities are readily available from one of the many online business schools; schools that offer busy professionals and mothers ready to re-enter the workforce a way to advance their careers in an increasingly competitive job market.

Online MBA programs are an excellent way to get an advanced degree because this option allows you to complete your higher education learning quickly and within your schedule. That way, you can add an online business masters degree or online masters of business administration degree to your resume at a faster pace than with classroom learning.

An online MBA degree program is similar to a classroom MBA degree program. You will be able to take the same type of classes, which offer real-world application on a variety of relevant business subjects like workforce diversity, global leadership skills, information technology, and knowledge management. The only difference with an online MBA degree is that you are able to sign up and take classes through online portals where you can interact with professors and colleagues on your timeframe.

In addition to a regular online MBA degree program in business or business administration, online business schools offer a wealth of specialized online MBA programs, including accounting, e-business, communications, marketing, media and entertainment, entrepreneurship, information technology, risk management, nonprofit management, international business and numerous other niche business careers. Each school will list information about their online MBA program specializations so you can narrow the choices of online business schools.

Once you select the type of online business masters degree you want to pursue, it is easy to sign up and get started. All the paperwork can be processed online and from home, readying you for the coming semester. From there, you can choose from a list of online classes and perhaps even download most of your materials from school’s web bookstore. In no time at all, you can be on your way to an online MBA degree.

Online business schools offer an affordable and convenient way to get the degree that you might have wanted but put off due to a hectic life. There is no time like the present to explore an accredited online business degree because the wide range of online business schools can help advance your career, enhance your earnings power, and stay up to speed on the new global business practices and processes.

About eLearners.com®
The eLearners.com website is one of several high visibility, high-quality prospecting tools offered by EducationDynamics, LLC. Since 1999, eLearners.com has been successfully connecting learners to online education, including online degree and certificate programs, specialized career training, and numerous online courses.

Check out the SalaryExpert.com eLearners Career Center at:
http://salaryexpert.elearners.com/

New Benefits Survey Reports Impact of Rising Health Care Costs on Nonprofits

As Seen on ERIERI.com...

WASHINGTON, DC - While most U.S. employers reported that health benefit premiums increased only by single digits in 2008, cost shifting to employees continued, in the form of higher premiums for medical and dental plans, reduced coverage, higher deductibles, and higher out-of-pocket co-payments. A new report, entitled 2009 Benefits in Nonprofit Organizations, Ninth Edition, provides current data on health plan costs and benefit practices in nonprofit organizations that can be used to help evaluate benefit program design strategies to contain costs. The report, released July 1, 2009, provides specific types of benefits offered (and levels) effective January 1, 2009, by 21 different types of nonprofit organizations. The 107 respondents, with almost 60,000 employees, included 66 percent organizations with fewer than 100 employees and 24 percent with 100 to 499; the remaining 10 percent employed 500 or more. One hundred forty-three medical plans covering 26,000 nonprofit employees across the United States were reviewed, along with 110 dental plans.

Details on medical, vision, dental, disability, and life insurance, along with retirement plans, are presented, as well as paid leave and executive perquisites.

The 2009 findings include:

• 62% of respondents have a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan as the primary medical plan.
  • The average employee cost for employee-only coverage is almost $67 per month.
  • The average employer cost for employee-only coverage is $427 per month – 86% of the total premium cost.
• Although total employment was almost 60,000, only 26,000 were covered by these plans – meaning that 60% opted out of their nonprofit employer's plan.
• While 95% offer a retirement plan, only 10% are defined benefit plans; the most common type is a 403(b) plan.
• While 65% offer traditional leave plans typically consisting of sick days, vacation, bereavement leave, personal leave, and floating holidays, the remaining 35% combine all or part of paid leave into a pool (Paid Time Off or PTO plans), granting an average of nearly 18 days of paid leave after one year of employment; the average granted at 10 years of service is 26 days.
• 87% offer dental plans, with Dental PPOs (63%) as the most common type.
• Life insurance is provided by 88% of respondents and 73% offer a long-term disability plan.

Copies of the report are available for $489 at www.abbott-langer.com. A companion benefit report, the 2009 Health Care Benefits Benchmarking Survey, which includes nonprofit organizations, government entities, privately owned for-profit, and publicly owned for-profit organizations, was published in April 2009. This report, covering health care data, medical insurance, dental insurance, and vision insurance, is also offered by Abbott, Langer Association Surveys, Inc. and may be purchased online at www.abbott-langer.com.

About Abbott, Langer Association Surveys:

Since 1967, Abbott, Langer has provided a wide variety of compensation and benefit survey reports, with a particular focus on the nonprofit and manufacturing sectors. Now operating under license with ERI Economic Research Institute (www.erieri.com), Abbott, Langer uses ERI's patented online survey capabilities to produce reports used by thousands of customers for salary and benefit planning and other HR management decision-making. Users are diverse organizations that vary in size from extremely small to over $4 billion in annual sales volume, and include firms that operate locally, regionally, nationally, and even internationally. In February 2007, Abbott, Langer Association Surveys moved all survey operations and offices from Crete, Illinois, to Washington, DC. Please call 877-210-6563 or visit www.abbott-langer.com for more information and a complete list of available surveys.

Can the U.S. Government Afford to Let California Fail?

California's budget crisis threatens the welfare of thousands of the state's resident...

Can the U.S. Government Afford to Let California Fail?

Local Data for Job Salaries for Popular Cities by State from SalaryExpert.com

SalaryExpert.com provides Salaries for Popular Cities by State...

The list of salaries are the 100 most-requested cities on SalaryExpert's free Salary Calculator, this list is updated daily.

SalaryExpert Provides HR professionals and employees with choices for finding the most accurate and up-to-date salary/compensation information, SalaryExpert.com has a range of salary tools, salary surveys and products to fit your specific needs.

Their primary data source is always the federal government. SalaryExpert's basic free report uses only one source per nation covered. For the United States, that sole source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics survey. For Canada, it is the similar federal pay report data from Statistics Canada. For the UK it is the National Statistics Office. Each report specifies its sources. International salary data is also from a single source, and is based on updated estimate from national statistics office data reported in the local currency of each nation.

Join SalaryExpert on Twitter for the most up-to-date information on Salaries at: http://twitter.com/SalaryExpert

Learn more about SalaryExpert at: http://www.salaryexpert.com

Unexpectedly Unemployed? Free Help from ERI Economic Research Institute

As Seen On PRLog.Org

If you are without a job, now might be the ideal time to review your skills and interests and see how they match various jobs. Available for your personal use at no cost, ERI (http://www.erieri.com) offers a tool that has long been used by human resource professionals to assess the specific skills, knowledge sets, and mental and physical capacities needed for various jobs and find which local companies might be potential employers.

ERI Economic Research Institute's Occupational Assessor™ (http://www.erieri.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=eDOT.Main) is an easy-to-use program that provides information concerning 99 characteristics of work for over 10,000 unique jobs found in the US today. The software helps assess abilities and interests and matches them to the requirements for actual jobs. When a user finds jobs of interest, the software then locates employers within commuting distance that employ people in these specific jobs, provides job availability statistics, and even links to online job postings within the commuting range.

According to ERI's founding director, Dr. David Thomsen, "Job search at the personal level is all about minimizing rejection. ERI's software identifies jobs that fit and local employers likely, or visibly, posting openings for these jobs, while providing contact names, emails, addresses, and phone numbers. Because this program increases the odds of a successful job search in these tough times, ERI has decided to make this program available at no cost."

You can use ERI's Occupational Assessor for many tasks:

* Identify your education, achievements, skills, present residence, and any limitations on physical and mental capacities;
* Review the jobs found nationally or locally for which your capacities and past training might qualify you;
* Receive three estimations of the number of these jobs within your area, region, or state;
* Generate a list of employers within commuting radius and a list of employers that are most likely to have the identified positions within their workforces;
* Review a list of job board postings by matched employer, area, and/or industry to see if any of these employers might now have "the right job at the right time in the right place";
* All this, at no cost!

Increase the possibilities for success in your job search by going to the ERI web site at (http://www.erieri.com) and downloading the Demo Edition of the Occupational Assessor. Enhanced versions of the software for consultants and vocational experts are also available for purchase.

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About ERI Economic Research Institute: Based in Redmond, Washington, ERI provides salary survey and cost-of-living research reports and software to over 15,000 organizations worldwide. With information gathered from online surveys and an extensive survey library, ERI provides subscribers with assessments on salary, relocation, the cost of living, and executive compensation. ERI's pay data covers the United States, Canada, and the EU. Its industry-leading Executive Compensation Assessor® & Survey software reports executive cash compensation based on information from private executive pay surveys, as well as publicly reported information for 6,500 US, 1,150 Canadian, and 2,300 UK and EU organizations. Visit http://www.erieri.com to learn more about ERI and to review its other talent management and compensation indices.

Where The Jobs Are, Spring 2009 - As Seen On Yahoo!

A quarterly survey reveals the cities expecting the largest employment growth--and losses--across the country.

Thanks to last year's strong harvest of apples and the jobs that followed in juicing, packaging and shipping, Yakima, Wash., has the strongest employment outlook in the country for the second quarter of 2009, according to a quarterly survey by employment services firm Manpower.

"This is an agricultural base, a huge apple-growing region," says Bill Cook, director of community and economic development for Yakima. "Last year's apple harvest was huge, and it helped carry employment through the winter. Even in a normal economic year that wouldn't happen."

Cities in the Pacific Northwest and Texas have the best employment outlook for April through June, while cities in the the Southeast have the weakest, according to the study.

Manpower's Employment Outlook Survey is conducted quarterly to measure employers' intentions of increasing or decreasing their numbers of employees. Each employer was asked: "How do you anticipate total employment at your location to change in the three months to the end of June 2009 compared with the current quarter?" The answer is the net employment outlook--the difference between employers who plan to increase and those who plan to decrease.

Of the 31,800 public and private sector employers surveyed in 201 metropolitan areas throughout the U.S., 15% anticipated increases in hiring, 14% said they'd likely decrease staff, and 67% foresaw no change.

Read the full article...

What is Compensation?

The general term, "compensation", applies to remuneration paid in exchange for work.

Normally, it means wages, salaries, bonus and other incentives, commissions, overtime, shift differentials, premium pay and other cash components that appear on W-2 taxable income statements. Good surveys are careful to clarify what they report. Base salary is the regular sort-of "guaranteed" pay, whether stated as a hourly wage or as a periodic paycheck. Total Cash Compensation is all the cash that is paid by the employer.

Some variable pay elements like overtime, shift differentials and premium pay are rarely reported in pay surveys because they change so often. Surveys of pay practices are more likely to cover those details, which vary mostly by industry and location.

Executives often receive extras that (when paid by a publicly traded corporation) the US Federal Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) require be valued in terms of equivalent cash; in those cases, an executive compensation survey may show Total Compensation that includes base and bonus (all cash beyond the base) plus non-cash elements like Stock Appreciation Rights, Long-Term Incentive awards, Long-Term Compensation and Other things like special taxable benefits like moving expenses and such. "Long-term" elements generally involve periodic annual payouts of pre-established bonus/incentive plans that involve performance measures and payout values computed and paid over multiple years.

In some economies like in the UK, Total Remuneration is the operative phrase to cover cash pay, stock awards, pension and benefits (because Britain requires those executive compensation elements to be published in corporate annual reports). Likewise, in the United States, top executives of tax-exempt entities have to openly publish the same kind of direct cash, non-cash pension, benefit and allowances information on tax forms that are technically available to anyone who wants to pay for a copy from the Internal Revenue Service.

The more basic the information, the easier it is to collect and analyze and the less expensive it is to get.

Learn more at: SalaryExpert.com

What is Education worth in the marketplace? - From SalaryExpert.com

What is Education worth in the marketplace?
by Jim Brennan, ERI Econonmic Research Institute

Education makes a difference. How does education level play a role in your salary? (For example, how might a starting salary differ based on if someone has a bachelor’s vs master’s degree?)

The role that education level plays in your salary depends on the nature of the job and the relevance of your education.

A PhD in Physics won’t earn you more money as a cab driver, but it will probably put you at the high end of the starting pay scale for physical stress measurement technicians, and it may be merely an essential entry requirement for rocket scientists.

In some jobs, like many commissioned sales positions, education is relatively irrelevant because initial income will be based on outputs (closely-measured productivity results) rather than on inputs (education, experience, process, etc.). At the same time, however, related education can affect the employer’s estimate of how effective a new hire will be immediately, and that can produce a fatter starting pay offer. A candidate for a telemarketing job with a degree in communications should be more productive and the hiring manager could probably justify a premium entry rate for someone expected to possess advanced essential skills and special competencies. If applying for a professional position as a suicide-prevention-line counselor, that same candidate with a bachelor’s degree in communications might merely meet the minimum requirements; they would most likely earn less pay at the beginning than a candidate with superior relevant credentials like a master’s degree in clinical psychology or a PhD in social work.

All else being equal, more formal education or advanced credentials in the specific field of work or occupational area will carry some weight in starting-salary offers. How much difference will depend on the employers and their practices.

Learn more at: SalaryExpert.com