Plant Services - May 2008 - (Page 59) WEB HUNTER the world’s largest database of individual employee compensation profiles. If you want to answer the question, you’re going to need to reveal much about yourself as you go through the online process and a seemingly endless set of questions. This is as close to a personalized analysis as I’ve seen, assuming that the questions aren’t red herrings from the Land of Oz. You be the judge. How much is enough From the government By all means, investigate what our hired hands in Washington have to say about wages as detailed at www.bls.gov. Be forewarned that there’s so much job and salary information on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics site you’re better off exploring on your own. Be sure to allocate plenty of time when you do it. In the interest of getting you started, though, I’d recommend begin with “Wages, Earnings and Benefits” on the left side to access “Wages by Area and Occupation.” Here is where you can view tables of national wage data and subsets segmented by region, state and metropolitan area. Also, check out the link to “Compensation Research” for scholarly works that delve into the economics of employment. Next, drop down and click on “Occupations” to get into the “Occupational Outlook Handbook.” Enter the word “maintenance” in the search box at the top right to gain access to information about the job outlook for how you earn your daily bread. The fact that you’re reading this column probably means that you have some curiosity, perhaps concern, about your financial future. You’re not alone; most people in a capitalistic economy have money on their minds. For most of us wage slaves, that periodic paycheck is the glue that keeps body and soul firmly connected to house and home. Maybe an obsession with wages is unfounded. Fortunately, almost everything financial yields to the iron will of mathematical analysis. While you worry about your earnings, you might want to bring structure to your musings with the financial tools provided by the Cable News Network (CNN), Fortune magazine and Money magazine. Anyway, tote your moneybag to http://money. cnn.com, where you should grab the drop-down menu behind the “Real Estate” link near the top center of the page and click on “Calculators.” This will reveal, among others, eight online calculation routines related to retirement and 14 more that address financial planning issues needed to get to that venerable status. Hopefully, these two sets of mathematical wizardry should show you the power of the salary you already have. May 2008 It’s a universal truth that everyone prefers pay raises that keep up with some benchmark from the macro economy. The problem is that the economy has many benchmark values, some of which are internally inconsistent or simply don’t relate to pay scales. Then, there’s always the concept of marginal utility, which says that the same $10 has much more value to a minimum-wage worker than it has to a corporate CEO. To help answer the question of worth, I direct your attention to Measuring Worth, a Web site developed by Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, both economics professors. Pop over to www.measuringworth.com and you can estimate the worth of the effort the pair put into their site. You’ll get calculators for annualized growth rates, relative values, purchasing power, savings growth, inflation rates and stock growth rates. You’ll be able to access time series data sets for gross domestic product, consumer price index, daily Dow-Jones Industrial Averages, the price of gold and interest rates. Gather up your old 1040s and track your success against the United States as a whole. Entitlements Cogitate and calculate You should be jealous. There’s at least one subset of the U.S. population that has been getting guaranteed annual increases since 1975. That group, growing by the minute, consists of retirees living on Social Security checks. Automatic costof-living adjustments (COLA), as well as the sheer number of people to be served, will push the cost of this entitlement program to dollar amounts beyond the comprehension of mere mortal intellects. So, it makes sense that, if the government acknowledges COLA, your salary ought to be doing the same. The decreed increases are available from “Social Security & the Cost-of-Living Adjustments,” a page posted at www.socialsecurity.gov/cola. At least you now have a target growth rate that might lead to the stratosphere. E-mail Executive Editor Russ Kratowicz, P.E., CMRP, at russk@putman.net. More resources at www.PlantServices.com Researching your employer – “Researching a company” Firing people – “Happy trails to you” Networking – “Networking for fun and profit” Salary surveys – “Reality check” Training method survey – “Put stock in training” Motivation – “Motivation, not manipulation” For more, search www.PlantServices.com using the keywords salary, management and wages. www.PLANTSERVICES.com 59 http://www.bls.gov http://www.measuringworth.com http://www.socialsecurity.gov/cola http://www.PlantServices.com http://money.cnn.com http://money.cnn.com http://www.PlantServices.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com
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