After you enable cookies, open up a new Internet Explorer window and log in to your account using your username and password. Once in your Digital Locker, click on the link to the Premium Salary Report and then click on the "Report" link next to the print icon. Contact SalaryExpert Customer Service at if that does not solve the problem.

To print PDF reports you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer. You can download this program from: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

What should my Proxy Server settings be to use a SalaryExpert Global Salary Calculator application?

The SalaryExpert Professional system uses port 80, the standard port for web traffic. If your proxy server does not allow an executable application to use port 80, then you need to allow port 80 traffic from/to SalProSetupPL.exe (the SalaryExpert GSC application).

You need to enter the proxy info in File|Proxy setup. If that doesn't work, then you can try allowing everything to come through from http://www.salaryexpert.com, IP = 207.153.189.79.

If neither solution works, you may wish to subscribe to ERI Economic Institute’s Salary Assessor software instead. This salary survey database provides excellent salary survey analyses for over 5,000 positions in North American and Europe. As a desktop software product, it eliminates Internet hassles.

How many jobs will I get in the annual edition of your Global Salary Calculator application?

With the most modern Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (NT, 2000, XP, Vista), you will see well over 100,000 positions in the local currency for over 200 countries. If you have the older Windows 98, 95 or ME systems, your operating system will only have space for 24,772 titles.

My Global Salary Calculator product can't hook up to the Internet. I get an "action cancelled" message.

The SalaryExpert Global Salary Calculator application is being prevented from accessing the Internet by your Internet Security software. It is being “firewalled.”

When you install your applications, the security system will automatically deny outside access to applications unless you tell it otherwise. You may have missed the request or accidentally denied the access permission for your SalaryExpert product(s). It is a common problem with software firewalls that control firewalling by application.

When successfully connected to the Internet, ads should appear in the masthead at the top of your Global Salary Calculator application. If these spaces are ever blank or show an error message, it means the program cannot access the Internet. If you can still access the Internet via a regular Web browser, then the problem is undoubtedly at the firewall level. First find out if you are using a proxy server. If not, then see below to reconfigure your firewall.

1. This is what a normal Global Salary Calculator window should look like.

2. This should be blank if no proxy server is required for you to access the Internet.

3. If you have Norton Internet Security:

• Open Norton Personal Firewall.
• Click on "Status & Settings".
• Next click on "Personal Firewall" for options.
• Then click on the "Configure" button in the bottom right-hand side of the page.
• On the next page, select the second tab "Programs" and check the entry for a SalaryExpert application. It should read "Permit All".
  

The steps to follow may differ for other brands of firewalls, but the end result should be the same. By instructing the firewall to allow SalaryExpert applications to access the Internet, you will be able to retrieve salary data from our servers.

What codes can I enter in the "ZIP Code" search field on the Salary Calculator?

The ZIP Code search field in the SalaryExpert Salary Calculator and Global Salary Calculator will accept five digit US ZIP codes and six digit Canadian postal codes only (hyphen not required for Canadian codes). This search option is available as an added feature to these products to assist the user in selecting their geographic locations. You may not need to enter the entire postal code to access State/Provincial or National locations located in the US and Canada.

Why do you ask questions about jobs and prices?

SalaryExpert.com collects information for research analysis regarding the changing nature of work in America. This work goes into our products to continually enhance SalaryExpert's data and position descriptions. Cost-of-living data is collected for our free cost-of-living and salary calculator reports.

Which products are for employers? Which are for employees?

As covered in our marketing comments about the products, HR departments and employers seeking commercial-quality, cross-referenced, and verified competitive market data by location and industry normally subscribe to the authoritative and long-proven ERI Economic Research survey databases. We at SalaryExpert.com merely lease small portions of the more comprehensive ERI datasets and apply job evaluation technology to predict the current local values of more titles, including many that are not widely surveyed. Hence, we cover more jobs in more locations because we are willing to rely on more limited sources with less precise detail.

Employers who wish to supplement their ERI subscriptions with our broader but less detailed salary data choose to download the SalaryExpert Global Salary Calculator application for the current calendar year. In addition, employers, individual employees, or board members purchase SalaryExpert's Executive Compensation Reports as the first step in a due diligence compliance sequence for Sarbanes-Oxley, intermediate sanctions, or reasonable compensation challenges.

SalaryExpert's Personal Compensation Reports and Executive Compensation Reports are designed for individual employee use. When a personal report of any kind is generated (after a payment commitment has been made), that report is immediately displayed on your PC. It remains stored for 30 days on our Internet server, available from the SalaryExpert Digital Locker section. Access by clicking on Your Account at the top of the SalaryExpert screen. Then input your user ID (your email) and the unique password you selected when you initially signed in.

SalaryExpert reports are primarily designed for individual employees and low-budget employers who do not require a highly industry-specific commercial database of competitive pay information. See ERI Economic Research, the pay information source used by most of the Fortune 500, for the commercial standard in corporate pay-setting database tools.

Where can I find more detailed pay information?

SalariesReview has recently introduced new Archival and Present Year Salary Surveys. SalariesReview printed survey results are displayed from three sources, three surveys in one: 1) Survey participants' data, summed, averaged and profiled, 2) norms created from reproducible noncopyrighted and leased national databases, and 3) norms derived from management data digitized from SEC and IRS reports. Three different survey results are provided in the printed copy for each job with differences due totally to the composition of the organizations included. SalariesReview surveys are available in two editions: condensed Archival (for litigation support and research) and more robust Year Present (for salary planning and competitive assessments).

Pay information for certain other position titles in North America, the United Kingdom and a number of EU nations is also available from ERI Economic Research. Positions in additional locations are surveyed and summarized worldwide at SalariesReview.com.

Expert users such as Human Resource and Compensation Departments of major companies, pay consultants, contractors, and attorneys (conducting prevailing wage analyses) would instead typically prefer to rely on the wide-ranging and long-proven database of ERI Economic Research. ERI has been the authoritative source of current consensus competitive pay survey information to the Fortune 500 for three decades. Their survey analysis software is interactive and reasonably priced for corporate and expert research use.

For the small price (if any) we charge for our service, we cannot routinely provide the kind of industry-specific data or precise enterprise-size-adjusted accuracy as does ERI (the best research firm that sells commercial pay data subscriptions to governments and major employers). SalaryExpert can and does provide broad searches, and we do cross reference a number of different sources in our more robust personal salary and executive compensation reports; but we can't match ERI for precision and are happy to refer you to this compensation research firm.

What about executive pay figures that should be adjusted for the size of the enterprise?

Our largest databases of job titles do not adjust for the size or industry differentials that are so important to executive compensation comparisons. For a compensation report that factors in industry, experience, and education, see SalaryExpert's Preliminary Executive Compensation Report. That will cite competitive rates, showing industry-specific pay at like-sized peer organizations and will include proxies for up to 12 publicly traded comparable organizations.

However, we recommend ERI Economic Institute’s Executive Compensation Assessor software if you require reports with these features:

• a lower statistical standard deviation
• more data sources
• data that will hold up in court
• subscribers including most of the Fortune 500, the IRS, and State Attorneys General

On how many hours of work are your annual gross income rates based?

All our figures are stated in terms of annual gross amounts based on a standard workweek of 40 hours, and are reported in terms of a full-time work year consisting of 2,080 hours.

I came to your site from a link for free salary information and did not find my title.

Some websites that carry our free link have opted to offer restricted versions of our database in order to operate faster.

Please realize that various websites currently are given a choice of SalaryExpert "modules" to post. The fastest-operating versions tend to be the most stripped-down modules, with the fewest total jobs. Even the smallest SalaryExpert module immediately loads more job titles than any other salary "calculator," but it is possible that you accessed a version that did not have all the specialized levels of job titles found in the more robust modules (which require a bit more time to operate on the Internet).

Nevertheless, even the "full" free system on our home website cannot effectively cover every possible job in every industry, particularly given the limits of Internet connections and our budgetary restraints on free data.

To access the most jobs, we recommend you subscribe to SalaryExpert's Global Salary Calculator database with over 100,000+ position titles in 200+ countries. This product reports competitive wage structures in local currencies. SalaryExpert's Global Salary Calculator is available on an annual basis and can be acquired online through user participation, then downloaded immediately from our website.

Can I get historical pay data?

Yes, but we will not store it for you nor will we at SalaryExpert.com engage in consulting research projects. The historical data is available from SalariesReview and public sources:

1. SalariesReview has recently introduced new Archival and Present Year Salary Surveys. SalariesReview printed survey results are displayed from three sources, three surveys in one: 1) Survey participants' data, summed, averaged and profiled, 2) norms created from reproducible non-copyrighted and leased national databases, and 3) norms derived from management data digitized from SEC and IRS reports. Three different survey results are provided in the printed copy for each job with differences due totally to the composition of the organizations included. SalariesReview surveys are available in two editions: condensed Archival (for litigation support and research) and more robust Year Present (for salary planning and competitive assessments).
2. The U.S. Department of Labor's website contains a variety of hourly and salaried job surveys.
3. ERI Economic Research Institute's website provides free access to public financial reports, including corporate proxies, 10-Ks, and annual reports. Form 990 tax filings of tax-exempt enterprises are available from ERI's website.

The U.S. Department of Labor's website contains a variety of hourly and salaried job surveys. ERI Economic Research Institute's free website provides free access to public financial reports, including corporate proxies, 10-Ks, and annual reports. Form 990 tax filings of tax-exempt enterprises are available from ERI's website.

Where do you get your pay data for so many job titles?

SalaryExpert basic reports draw on only the Bureau of Labor Statistics OES database, updated by competitive rates and increase movement info gathered from SalariesReview.com. For details, see our Methodology.

Annual change comparisons may be misleading because of the nature of our basic source data. Since the most basic SalaryExpert data is fundamentally only a greatly updated version of federal info that is from one to three years old when we get it, the most accurate and authoritative historical analytical data will be available from the federal government. The original source data can be found where the government publishes all the economic research funded by our tax dollars.

We start with the OES job family data that summarizes all pay info into about 900 job categories, then we apply enhanced Dictionary of Occupational (eDOT) specific updated job content/characteristic factors to parse out the equivalent "precise" pay for any such specific component of the "general job family" pay rate reported by the BLS, as released around December of each year in groups of 1/3 of the total job families. This is then updated by input from the Expert-sponsored interactive websites to approximate today's equivalent values.

What is "cost of living"?

Low cost of living in an area means that you have a proportionally higher buying power in that area. Your dollars spent there buy an amount of goods and services that would cost you far more in the average city.

The cost of living figures are calculated per the methodologies detailed in our reports and further elaborated on the site material covering cost-of-living reports in the U.S. and Canada. In short, we use government data showing the indexed cost of specific market baskets of goods and services for certain income levels in various metropolitan centers. If you fit the average expenditure pattern for your income group, our figures will be extremely accurate for you; if you live far above (or below) your means, then our figures will be less appropriate for your use.

Do you use "gross" or "net" figures?

All SalaryExpert wages are reported in standardized gross amounts, prior to national/local tax treatments or whatever individual deductions may apply to reach a net figure.

For example, an employer may pay all incumbents of the same clerking job a fixed rate (and that's what SalaryExpert reports); but each individual clerk-employee receives a different amount of net take-home pay based on his/her tax treatment, number of specified personal deductions for dependents, automatic dues paid, optional benefit payments, or other directed diversions of personal earnings to savings plans, Christmas clubs, etc.

Our pay figures are all pre-tax gross amounts.

Why is the cost of living different for different jobs?

The cost of living, in terms of a standard expenditure budget, varies according to the average individual's income. People with higher incomes have both different expenditure patterns and different cost impacts than people with lower incomes. Both the amount and type of expenditures change with greater income amounts, even in the aggregate. Also people earning the same salary usually experience different individual living costs, based on their life circumstances and choices. For example, a married man has different costs than a single woman, despite identical incomes.

An architect's cost of living differs from an accountant's cost of living, most fundamentally, because they typically have different incomes and thereby experience different spending patterns, even before you take into account their individual specifications such as family size.

Cost of living has never attained a statistically significant relationship with wages. While the two generally tend to move in the same direction, they are not predictive of each other in either time or amount. Even though it is popular to cry "I deserve a cost-of-living increase," wages continue to increase far faster than living costs. Most people would be horrified to be restricted to actual "cost-of-living increases" in periods when market salaries are increasing but living costs change little. At other times, living costs have risen dramatically while wages have remained flat. Overall the cost of living doesn't impact wages unless and until competitive market salaries change, at which time employers pay for the new/current market replacement cost for labor, as they always have done.

Where and how employees choose to live is largely a matter of individual (rather than corporate) choice. Employers never feel obligated to pay for changes in employee life style choices, which is the most frequent reason for a change in an individual "cost of living." If one moves from a trailer to a mansion, the company will not give you a raise, nor will the employer cut your pay to reflect your lower cost of living if you move from a mansion to a trailer.

If the local living costs affect the willingness of people to work for various pay rates, it will be reflected in those local competitive pay standards. Employers always manage their payroll so as to assure an adequate supply of competent workers. In short, employers pay wages according to the cost of labor, regardless of the "cost of living" of each or all of those workers.

Why is there an upper limit on SalaryExpert pay data?

The OES government survey questionnaire's maximum salary cutoff point is $70.01 dollars an hour. So the highest individual rate reported by the OES is $145,000 per year. In addition, the surveyed figures are updated from their effective dates when published to today's projected values (based on our research of salary structure changes). Any "high" figure shown above the average/median amounts would reflect the updated 90th percentile level of the salary range, which will typically be higher than average in the highest-paying communities.

I get an error message, "unable to download."

If you get the message, "Unable to download data from Internet. Data for this position in this area is currently unavailable," and you are not experiencing local server difficulties, please check your version of Windows.

Windows 98 frequently gives that same error message because it can't handle the large amount of data that is required to successfully run the application. In essence, we have too many jobs for your limited operating system to fully display them all. Try it on another PC where you can run Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Your product did not download to my PC. Why?

Many of the SalaryExpert products supply a zipped executable file that loads to your PC so you can have a 24/7 link directly into our server. That provides you with greater speed and security than a simple Internet connection that slowly sends information back and forth. But executable files can trigger security firewalls that prevent, quarantine or even strip executable files from downloaded attachments.

If your network security system prohibits the download of zipped executable files, we can send you a revised zip file as described here.

I only get international locations and can't access US/Canada data.

If the system detects a different (i.e., UK or China) browser language when you arrive, it defaults to the International dataset. Change your browser language under Properties/ General/ Language to US English.

Open up an Internet Explorer browser.

In the top menu, select Tools / Internet Options.

When the 'Internet Options' box opens, click on the Languages button.

Then click on the Add button in the middle of the screen.

Select English (United State) [en-us].

Why the change in salary levels from a year ago?

Many jobs pay less today than a year or two ago. That is the reality for many jobs in many cities. The big story in recent years has not been salary increases, but salary decreases as senior people have been laid off, retired, left their prior jobs, or been promoted into different higher-paying positions. Also, there has been much market softening in trade-labor rates, with the general economic weakness ever since 2000 and even greater losses in union negotiating power and job counts in major urban centers. In addition, there is a sea change underway in inter-urban pay relationships, with big cities moving closer together and small towns falling even farther behind in pay as more people move to the big city for slightly better wages. The net effect is that certain low-skill or trade-union jobs are now held by lower-paid people earning less than their predecessors on average, yet grateful to have the work.

SalaryExpert US data calculations are based on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics OES datasets, which remains the largest survey in existence. For example, in one year, 33% of OES areas reported 2005 carpenter wages lower than 2004 carpenter wages.

In addition, SalaryExpert is in the process of updating international data country by country. When we find that newer data shows that a position should earn lower wages than we had previously reported, we update the data as necessary and it is immediately reflected in our GSC and free salary reports. That being said, there is a scarcity of good international data, and SalaryExpert datasets are single-sourced from National Statistics/Labour Offices. We cannot attest to the accuracy of some national data since it is single-sourced and is not cross-checked.

For HR professionals who require reliable salary data cross-checked from multiple sources, we recommend ERI Economic Research Institute's compensation software (see www.erieri.com). This salary survey software is relied upon by most of Fortune 500 Companies to set salaries, executive compensation, branch office pay, and relocation allowances. ERI compensation data is gathered from thousands of salary surveys and sources (unlike SalaryExpert, which just uses one source per country). SalaryExpert databases, on the other hand, are designed to provide a great breadth of data (for 100,000+ positions in 200+ countries) at very inexpensive prices. If your organization requires precise data for individual salary planning, we do recommend you use a more detailed salary calculator, such as ERI's software, which allows you to adjust salary calculations for important factors such as industry, employee experience, organization pay strategy, etc. The database covers more than 5,000 jobs in the US, Canada, and Europe.

How will I know when your salary data is updated?

Major database changes bring a new version number, such as 5.1 or 5.2 for the calendar year in question. We also correct individual miscodings and errant figures as discovered, without reissuing completely new database editions. In addition, we update data at the end of each month. The first day of each month, you should see a slightly updated figure based on our historical time series analysis of market movement rates for the job and location.

Can I easily copy Global Salary Calculator data into Excel?

No. Such a feature would facilitate reverse engineering, and would literally give away our product to whoever wanted to easily duplicate it.

Our affiliate, ERI Economic Research does produce interactive software that permits limited transfers of data tables to spreadsheets or text files. For example, download a free demo of the Salary Assessor software (which provides salary data for over 5,000 jobs in the US, Canada, and Europe). Once you have this software open, click on the Benchmark List tab or Geographic List tab. The former compares salaries for up to 300 jobs in one location. The latter compares salaries for just one job in up to 99 locations. Once you have inputted your desired position/location combination, select Edit / Copy to Clipboard / Salary Table/ For Spreadsheets. Then open Excel and select Edit / Paste.

Can I subscribe to a version of SalaryExpert's calculators that does NOT require me to fill out a questionnaire before retrieving each report?

SalaryExpert's 2009 Global Salary Calculator does NOT require you to answer job analysis questions before retrieving salary data. Reminder: SalaryExpert's Global Salary Calculator is available by participating in an ongoing data collection effort. The Global Salary Calculator database is updated annually.

Where can I find more information?

Click here for information.

Where can I find more information on international statistical agencies?

Please see this website provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.