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.

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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

Why do salaries differ based on where you live?

Why do salaries differ based on where you live?
by Jim Brennan - www.erieri.com

If your salary differs based on where you live, it usually means you work in the same place you live. Salaries tend to be based on where you work more than where you live. If you live in East St. Louis IL and work in St. Louis MO, you will be paid according to the local Missouri rates. In that case example, both your gross (total before deductions) and net (after deductions) also differ more; because the City of St. Louis has an earnings tax.

Different locations feature different salaries for otherwise similar jobs because each area has a unique competitive market for labor, based on the practices of employers in that area. Generally speaking, people are willing to work for different amounts in different locations. Manhattan workers demand different salaries than those in Queens, for example. Los Angeles has different salaries than Detroit. Miami pays differently than Atlanta. Salaries vary by the practices of the employers in the area.

Every organization has its own way of paying people. Each decides which labor market will apply (and for what jobs) as their basis for competitive comparisons. For jobs where good candidates can easily be found within the nearby commuting area, most employers pay local competitive rates. When the company has to search an entire region of states to find the right worker, they will be forced by competitive necessity to pay a regional or even national salary. Executive jobs tend to be paid on national or international scales where the pay practices nearest the work location are less vital than the pay practices within the reach of the candidate. Hourly workers usually can’t justify moving to another state for a higher wage and thus tend to be limited to a relatively narrow range of local pay; but executives move (usually with their relocation expenses paid by the employer) routinely and know that they operate in a wider competitive market for pay.

Visit: SalaryExpert and ERI for more salary information!

Everything You Should Know about Your Salary - CBsalary.com

It happens all the time. An employee marches into her boss's office demanding a raise. A college graduate looks forward to a high starting salary because he "deserves" one. A job seeker researches the average salary for a position she's interested in, expecting to automatically be offered something in the same arena.

Although salary information is one of the most important aspects of finding a new job, it's also the most under-researched. Unfortunately, with so many salary resources out there, there is always conflicting information and people who always disagree with, or don't understand, the information presented.

What you, the job seeker, must understand is that the information provided to you via salary information sites should merely be a starting point in your research. What you find as the average salary for a position doesn't guarantee that is what you will earn; there are too many other factors things that come into play.

To help understand how you can analyze the salary information you find online and apply it to your situation, we've brought in compensation expert Jim Brennan, senior associate with the ERI Economic Research Institute, to help.

Read the FULL Article at: www.CBsalary.com