US Salary Increase Budgets for 2015

While the employment rate continues to go down, there is still significant slack remaining in the labor market, allowing employers to avoid significant acceleration in labor costs. Despite the relatively low level of projected salary budget increases in 2015, the median of which is the same as the actual increase every year since 2011, the danger of inflation eroding the real value of the increase appears slight. There is little variation across the 11 industry groups examined, with nearly all industries reflecting the same projection for 2015 as a whole—a 3.00 percent median increase across all employee categories. The responses of 315 organizations are included in this year’s analysis for the four employee groups: non-exempt hourly (non-union), non-exempt salaried, exempt, and executive.