How to Use the PMI Salary Survey

The 13th edition of the PMI biennial salary survey is out, and has useful insights into the value of the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® certification and the importance of continuous learning and skill building in gaining a competitive professional edge.

In this post, however, I’d like to share not only key findings from the survey but also some thoughts on how project professionals and organizations can and should put this research to practical use.

After all, Earning Power: Project Management Salary Survey – Thirteenth Edition is intended to be, first and foremost, a business tool. It can arm project practitioners with the knowledge they need to compete more effectively in today’s dynamic job market. And its data can help recruiters, human resource and compensation professionals set more equitable salaries for project management roles within their organizations.

Highlights from the Project Management Salary Survey

Before we discuss how to use the salary survey, let’s look at some key takeaways from the report:

Survey respondents with a PMP certification earn higher median salaries than those without PMP certification – 33 percent higher on average across the 21 countries surveyed.

About two-thirds (66 percent) of survey respondents report that their total compensation (including salary, bonus, and other cash incentives) increased in the 12 months prior to taking the survey. Among those receiving an increase, 61 percent report increases of at least 5 percent over that period.

What’s more, there is broad consensus that the PMP certification contributed to their salary growth and that it is valuable to their career, although this sentiment varies considerably between countries.

Certification was seen as most valuable to the careers of those in Mexico, Nigeria, and Colombia, while certification holders in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru were most likely to agree that certification contributed to salary growth.

Salary growth attributed to having a PMP certification also tends to be greater in the earlier stages of one’s PMP tenure. For example, 50 percent of PMP certification holders with less than three years of tenure in Nigeria were likely to agree that PMP certification contributed significantly to salary growth. This was also true in United Arab Emirates (49 percent), France (44 percent), and Saudi Arabia and Egypt (both 43 percent).

Median salaries, of course, vary widely from country to country – ranging from a high of $120,000 in the United States to a low of $11,765 in Egypt.

Finally – and not surprisingly – median salary levels were higher for roles with increased job responsibility. They also tended to increase based on the size of projects managed from the standpoint of both the number of team members involved and project budgets.

How Project Managers and Employers Can Use the Salary Survey

As I noted earlier, however, all this data is intended to be put to practical use. Practitioners, for example, can use the data to chart their career journey by exploring the connections between certifications, skills and salary levels. Employers, meanwhile, can gain a better sense of marketplace dynamics to set more equitable pay structures. The demographic variables related to compensation should be particularly valuable to compensation committees, human resources departments and executive recruiters.

To make the data as useful as possible, the report includes eight major position descriptions/levels, which can be used to cross-tabulate the data. PMI worked with a third-party research firm and PMI members to make the position descriptions/levels as meaningful and “real world” as possible.

PMI members have exclusive access to the full report which provides detailed salary information in local currencies for each of the 21 countries included in the study. Members can also access even more detailed salary data that is cross-tabulated by various demographic, compensation-related variables such as age, gender, education level, industry and more.

To further aid practitioners and employers, the report includes reported salary increases over the past 12 months and expected salary increases over the next 12 months, as well as information about employee benefits, such as stock options, pension plans, and paid days off.

A summary version of the report is available on PMI.org, along with a customized interactive salary tool that allows you to run customized queries to compare salaries by country, position, industry, company size, PMP certification status and, in some markets, state, provincial and metropolitan area. In short, Earning Power: Project Management Salary Survey – Thirteenth Edition offers a wealth of data that can give you a competitive edge in any salary negotiation. I urge you to check it out.