Compensation Glossary

ERI's software data is based upon a plethora of original sources, including hundreds of surveys. Some of these surveys do not specify the number of enterprises surveyed or the number of incumbent observations reported. Other surveys do enumerate the number of observations, but their totalities may involve redundant counts. In keeping with our constant insistence on accuracy and statistical precision, ERI declines to estimate how many total job incumbents are represented by the current consensus updated figures we report by industry, location, relevant experience, or size dimension from every possible source. Instead, we provide only the reliability statistics for one single identifiable survey out of the hundreds that we analyze. This source's counts can be proven accurate and precise (even if somewhat conservative, given all the many additional sources we also reference). For the Salary Assessor software, this source is the Bureau of Labor Statistic's OES; for the Executive Compensation Assessor software this is the SEC Edgar list of all ~14,000 registered US corporations. For Canada, we receive no similar reliability statistics from Statistics Canada.