Geographic Assessor (GA / GA+) Background

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ERI Product Matrix

ERI's Geographic Assessor® (GA) Professional Edition compares geographic salary levels at the location of your headquarters and branch offices. Subscribers utilize this desktop software application to set branch office salary structures that are fair and competitive. ERI’s pay survey software contrasts salaries in over 9,600 locations worldwide, with over 8,200 US and Canadian locations, including suburbs. The Consultant Edition includes UK and European pay differentials. Users can compare cities to each other or to a national average. Alternatively, they can create user-defined locations based on the commuting distance of the local labor pool. The Geographic Assessor also provides general cost-of-living comparisons to help organizations select locations for new facilities. Geographic salary and cost-of-living differentials are calculated based on the earnings levels and locations the user selects. A Comparison List screen is available for multiple office locations, with summary salary differentials at different earnings levels, or  grade midpoints, as selected by the user.

Prevailing Wages for H-1B Visa Applications

The Consultant Edition (GA+) also provides US prevailing wage and Census data. Subscribers utilize this edition to determine prevailing wages for H-1B visas, set bids for government contracts, and retrieve US Census data of race and gender (1990-2000) by job category. This Census information provides baseline reference data for affirmative action reporting and OFCCP 11246 Regulation analyses. ERI researchers save you time and expense by collecting and analyzing salary survey data and cost-of-living statistics from thousands of sources. Subscribers can quickly prepare reports for management using Geographic Assessor cost-of-labor tables and graphs. Prevailing wage reports can also be saved, emailed, printed, or exported to other applications, such as Word, Excel, etc.  Sold on an annual subscription basis, database updates are released each quarter (January, April, July, and October) via Internet download, mailed DVD, or mailed memory key. At this time, memory keys are only available to subscribers with a Consultant Assessor Series subscription.

GEOGRAPHIC ASSESSOR BACKGROUND

The Geographic Assessor software and databases were initially created as an easy-to-use calculator of geographic pay and cost-of-living differentials.  This product calculates variances between cities as a complement to the Geographic Reference® which used to provide only structures and equations compared to a US national norm.  Users of the Geographic Reference had to hand-calculate inter city differentials by first converting a Base City's Area Structures data to US or Canadian National and then making a second comparison to the Destination City.  The Geographic Assessor software and databases perform these calculations for you in seconds.  The Geographic Reference report no longer includes these equations for manual calculations.

For salary and wage levels, ERI continues to apply statistical analyses to nationally and regionally reported survey data, utilizing a benchmark modeling technique developed by ERI. ERI effects no magic with our collection of survey data, creation of a master database, and statistical analyses.  You might also produce these results, should you wish to expend the time and expense of collecting the thousands of national and local area surveys now conducted within the US and Canada by trade, association, private, and government entities.

Based upon these two separate data analyses, the Geographic Assessor software and databases calculate both the relative cost-of-living and salary and wage levels for selected metropolitan areas or cities. The Geographic Assessor  software and databases also provide a comparison of both areas to a country-wide average.

Relocation Administration

Subscribers who are administering an employee relocation or transfer are strongly encouraged to utilize the Relocation Assessor® software and databases.  The Geographic Assessor software and databases present cursory cost-of-living information.  This information is limited to renters' spending patterns and is intended to provide only a first look at the relative buying power of wages/salaries in different areas.  It is not intended to present a recommended COLA or other relocation administration data.