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Every quarter, thousands of companies use The PayScale Index to stay updated on economic trends as they pertain to wages. We track quarterly changes in total cash compensation for:
- The United States
- Full-time, private industry employees in 18 different categories
- A broad range of company sizes, from small to enterprise
- Wages in 15 industries across the 20 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs)
- Canada
- Full-time, private-industry employees in the six largest metropolitan areas
- The United Kingdom
- Country-wide trends for full-time, private industries employees
In the third quarter of 2016, we are happy to report that US wages were strong at the national level – just as they have been since the first quarter. Even better, this continued growth is a whopping 10.5% above what it was pre-recession in 2006. Year-over-year, the average US wage rose by 2.3%. Digging a little deeper into our data, we found that wage increases significantly ranged across the US. As an example, average wages rose by 3.9% in San Diego, whereas in St. Louis they rose by just 0.8%.
Looking at quarterly growth, the average US wage increased by 0.5% between Q2 and Q3 this year. Although our research revealed that wage growth ranges didn’t significantly change by geography or industry since last quarter, the Accommodation and Food Services industry surprised us. Despite ranking second-to-last in growth since we began tracking wages in 2006, this industry’s wages grew remarkably fast over the last 18 months, so much so that this industry was a top performer in both quarterly and annual growth at 3.6% and 1.3%, respectively.
The outlook for the UK is also pretty good, increasing by the same 10.5% since 2006. We’re still keeping our eyes peeled for wage contraction post-Brexit vote.
In Canada, the year-over-year growth is holding fairly constant. That said, they have had the highest growth of the three countries, growing 11.5% since 2006. Canada also sees some regional differentiation, especially in Ottawa-Gatineau which has seen 3.1% growth over Q3 2015.
Read all three indices, as well as some great reports on the hottest skills in the Research Reports section of our Modern Compensation Hub.
