There are two sides to every story, and recent structural engineer compensation definitely has a story to tell—with two very different sides. The good news is that salaries are still climbing, although only very slightly over the previous year; the bad news is that increases in salary have slowed significantly.

In fact, overall earnings may be declining when considering decreases in annual bonuses and raises received.

Earnings
While annual salary is the bright spot for increased earnings, the rate at which annual salaries have increased has slowed significantly from a peak in 2006. Figure 1 shows the increasing trend in median annual salary. Figure 2 shows the slowing trend in percentage increase in median annual salary from one year to the next.

Bonuses and raises—both the percentage who received them and the amounts—were well below last year’s reported values.

Additionally, respondents reported three types of earnings reductions that were not based on merit: salary freeze/no raise (21 percent), decrease or elimination of annual bonus (28 percent), and pay cuts (7 percent).

Salary—The median annual salary reported is $84,500, representing a 1-percent increase compared with the $83,300 reported last year; see Table 1. Table 1 also breaks the data into median annual salaries for those structural engineers employed in the public versus the private sector. (Note that these percentages do not add to 100 because 8 percent of respondents did not indicate in which sector they are employed.)

Table 2 shows the slight increases in median annual salary for this year as reported by years of experience.

Bonus—The median amount of annual bonus received decreased to $5,000, down from the $5,500 reported last year. But more significantly, the number of respondents who received a bonus decreased to 64 percent from the 72 percent reported last year. As shown in Table 2, bonuses range from 5 to 9 percent of salary. The median annual bonus received as a percentage of annual salary also dropped slightly to 6 percent this year, from the 7 percent reported during the last two years.

Raise—The reported raises received also plummeted. The number of respondents who received a raise fell to 72 percent from a high of 87 percent last year. While the majority of respondents did report receiving raises, the percentage of raise decreased to 4.3 percent from the median of 5.0 percent received last year. Table 3 shows median raises received as reported by years of experience.

Job title/position—Table 3 highlights salary and bonus as reported by job title/position, though this is a somewhat subjective descriptor as job titles vary by firm.

Self-employed structural engineers
There were a few more self-employed structural engineers who responded to the survey this year (7 percent as compared with 6 percent last year), yet this self-selecting group reported slightly lower earnings. The median total income generated from providing structural engineering services to clients was $100,000 in 2008, as compared with $105,000 the previous year.

Unfortunately, the majority (46 percent) of this subset of structural engineers reported a decrease in total income in 2008 when compared with 2007. Additionally, 62 percent anticipate that the economic downturn will cause their income to decrease in 2009 as compared with 2008.

Findings
Last year’s data indicated that the engineers with the highest increases in salary were those with fewer than four years of experience. That was likely true because firms were scrambling to hire qualified engineers and college graduates had their choice of many competing offers. In the current climate, the engineers in this experience group reported very meager salary increases (0.5 percent) and received the lowest number of bonuses and raises (as opposed to the highest last year). What a difference a year makes!

Structural engineer satisfaction levels regarding earnings are down. Fifty-seven percent indicated that they are satisfied or very satisfied with current earnings, down from 67 percent from last year. Although this decrease in satisfaction level is no surprise given the decrease in bonuses and raises, the fact that the satisfaction level peaked last year at 67 indicates that structural engineers are not highly satisfied with earnings even in good times.

Benefits and other factors
Learn how benefits reported in this year’s survey—including medical insurance, retirement, paid time off, and satisfaction levels—compare with the previous year at www.gostructural.com.

Additionally, information linking licensure, education, and geographical location to compensation are available online as well.

Survey method
Invitations to participate in the Structural Engineer 9th annual Compensation Survey were e-mailed in February 2009 to more than 51,000 subscribers to Civil Connection and Structural Engineer eNews (e-mail newsletters that includes CE News and Structural Engineer subscribers, as well as others). Of the 10,427 e-mails that were opened (21 percent), 2,095 people launched the online survey. The survey remained open for four weeks, and during that time we received 1,645 completed records.

For this analysis, we separated the data provided by structural engineers (53 percent of the responses) from the civil engineers’ data (44 percent), which is reported in the June issue of CE News. After cleaning up the data, 847 responses were analyzed from structural engineers who described themselves as engaged in design, analysis, management, and construction of buildings, bridges, and other structures. Interestingly, this is essentially the same response rate as we have received in each of the past two years.

All of the data presented in this article, including in all of the tables and figures, is from permanent, full-time employees, except for the paragraph describing self-employed respondents.

Conclusions
The Structural Engineer Compensation Survey is executed each year in February and collects data from the 12 months prior. We intend for the data presented to inform you about compensation within the structural engineering industry so that you can make informed decisions about your career. During a time when the economy is causing many firms to struggle, compensation reporting sheds light on how individual engineers are fairing.