In the monthly Glassdoor Local Pay Reports, we examine pay growth trends for 60 different jobs across 10 major metros and the United States. But what’s the connection between pay growth and earning potential?
To find out, we compared two key metrics of pay against each other: the level of pay (i.e., median base pay), versus year-over-year pay growth. Ideally, employees would want to be in the “sweet spot” -- jobs that are both high growth and high paying. Jobs like customer service manager, registered nurse, professor and attorney fall into this category.
The figure below shows four categories: high pay, high growth; high pay, low growth; low pay, high growth; and low pay, low growth. It’s based on annual U.S. median base pay for full-time workers, and year-over-year pay growth for 60 jobs from the April 2017 Glassdoor Local Pay Reports.
Source: Glassdoor Local Pay Reports, April 2017. Figures show U.S. estimated median annual base pay for full-time employees.
Overall, there’s a slight negative relationship between pay and growth. Higher paying jobs on average are correlated with lower pay growth. And lower paying jobs are correlated with higher growth rates.
For example, data scientist is among the highest-paying jobs in the U.S. today, with a median base pay of $94,944 per year. However, data scientist pay is only growing at 1.1 percent from a year ago, well below the national average of 2.7 percent. On the contrary, cashiers earn a median base pay of $27,582 per year, but are experiencing rapid pay growth of 5.0 percent year-over-year.
But it’s important to note that not every job follows this pattern. Some jobs have both high pay and high wage growth, while others have both low pay and low growth. The figure above is divided into four quadrants to illustrate both these general trends and the outlier jobs.