ERI Employer-Provided Data Sources

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		Salary Survey Software
		Geographic Pay Data
		Cost of Living Data
		Executive Data
		Non-Profit Pay Data
		Job Analysis Data
		ERI's Platform Library

While ERI collects all sources available, the Assessor Series consists of 100% employer-provided compensation data. (PAQ Services, ERI's affiliate, utilizes employee-provided data, in part, for its eDOT Skills Project since work measures, such as "peer interaction," are known by the employee, but not necessarily by the employer.) The process of including a job in the Assessor Series begins with identification of the distinct jobs found in the US economy. The primary task of each job, under the US FLSA definition, requires unique knowledge and ability skill sets, proven in fact by job postings, disability claimant reporting, field job analyses, and salary survey inquiries. This identification process is tracked in a daily log and can be publicly reviewed at ERI's Job Availability website (see Job Availability Log). When over 250 occurrences are profiled and projected nationally, the job is added to PAQ's eDOT Skills Project database for inclusion in ERI's Occupational Assessor (OA) (also called the enhanced Dictionary of Occupational Titles (eDOT®))

ERI compensation researchers and PAQ job analysts then review ERI's data mining of US national job postings for any new job (over 50% are now mined and digitized with over a gigabyte of data added daily), with a focus on job description prose, including skill/action verbs and work objects, size, and an eSIC industry profile. Captured task descriptions are incorporated into a job description that exactly follows the construct of the abandoned US DOT and FLSA regulations. eDOT's 99 Selected Characteristics of Occupations (SCOs), including the abandoned US (1991/93) DOT's 64 SCOs, are assigned by semantic matching to similar jobs. These 99 job analyses questions/measures are then incorporated into the following: 1) SalaryExpert's free Salary Calculator (in which 5 questions are asked, 3 for SCOs, and 33 sets create a finding); 2) SalariesReview, ALAS, and ERI Salary Surveys (entered by HR analysts, rather than Salary Expert's unknown visitor or subject matter input); 3) ERI's Occupational Assessor's cybernetic system (the more subscribers use or change the data–again submitted by subject matter experts–the better the data becomes); and 4) the PAQ questionnaire library (in which SME field job analysts enter data utilizing a methodology consistently used since 1974). Over time, the worker trait measures (all 64 original DOT, plus 35 new eDOT work measures) evolve with a rate of error illustrated to meet Daubert Challenge criteria, along with corrected job description prose. Both means and modes are reported. PAQ's use of a five-measure input ordinal scale for the two-thirds of eDOT jobs reporting a three-measure ordinal scale allows both an additional high and low measure, creating a quantitative environment in which the Central Limit Theorem applies. Leased by PAQ exclusively to ERI for use in the Occupational Assessor, a legacy hardcopy volume in PDF format is created at the end of each year with preface and appendix content matching the abanodoned US 1991 DOT and accompanying 1993 SCO volumes. The 2009 DOT and SCO volumes will be the first "legacy" volumes published. A similar salary, demographic, and cost-of-living legacy report, ERI's 2009 Geographic Reference Report (GREF), has been published annually since 1987. An International Reference Report (IREF) complements the GREF.

These new jobs are then added one at a time to the described SalariesReview database, ERI Salary Surveys, and the affiliate Abbott, Langer Association Surveys (ALAS). The latter two surveys are traditional online and/or hardcopy salary surveys with input contributed by HR analysts. SalariesReview surveys have existed since 1998, with an online methodology patent won in March 2005 (Patent Nos. US 6,862,596 and 7,647,322). Conducted annually since 1967, the ALAS surveys are niche efforts, including food manufacturing, geotechnical consulting, and others, but mainly nonprofit and association related reports. ERI's Occupational Assessor captures last claimed salaries for disabled claimants and also contributes this data to the SalariesReview survey database. Unlike many dot.com and benefit consulting firms, ERI does not data mine or include subscribing organizations' data (possible via any online salary planning sheet). That is, the Assessor Series' new salary planning datasets remain on a subscribing "super-user's" PC, behind the subscribing organization's firewalls. We guard and respect our subscribers' privacy and do not store subscriber employee names or pay on ERI fileservers.

Typically, after one or two full years of survey cycles, these new jobs are added to ERI's Assessor Series, with Director level and above jobs being added to the Executive Compensation Assessor. Closely abiding by FTC and US Justice Department regulations, survey data is only disclosed after a 90-day waiting period for ERI and ALAS surveys, and after sufficient sample sizes exist for inclusion in the Assessor Series. Data is checked or enhanced, where possible, by ERI digitization and OCR reading of public forms, which include annual reports, 10-Ks, proxies, and Form 990s. Sample size tells the full story. Most major survey organizations report less than 1,000 participating organizations, some fewer than 100. ERI's reading of Form 990s has captured compensation data from over 525,000 unique organizations, including over 90% of health care organizations, all charities, associations, most credit unions, foundations, etc. Where available, ERI also purchases or leases data from consulting firms, Morningstar, D&B, GuideStar, SEDAR, National Statistics Offices, etc., all under formal contracts and at a cost exceeding millions of dollars annually and many times that for the described internal ERI data collections. (ERI has grown from 1987 to 2009 without telemarketers or direct sales personnel. As compared to other "survey" organizations employing hundreds of sales-related personnel, our expenses have been for data collection and analyses.) While traditional salary surveys sometimes reflect non-random samples, ERI's databases have grown so robust that many ERI products can be better characterized as censuses. Our focus is data. We do not provide fee-for-service consulting.

Compensation data in the Assessor Series is supplied by subject matter experts, including HR analysts and the IRS. Callers often ask for a comparison to free sites' data, provided by employees/incumbents, which ERI finds to be 21% to 85% inflated from its research (see Per Reference Image), and Salary.com's data, in which "98% of jobs' values are estimated" (see Salary.com source image). (If you are going to use free data, ERI recommends www.salaryexpert.com. SalaryExpert, also found on CareerBuilder, uses estimates created from the US Government's Occupational Employment Statistics [OES] job families, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] no longer reports on specific jobs.) Radford, Mercer, and Wyatt surveys are like ERI and ALAS surveys–all are "old-fashioned surveys"–although Mercer's Prism may contribute client data to their surveys. Founded over 20 years ago, ERI stands alone in that its applications allow subscribers to retrieve source documents by simply clicking on a dot for a web download.

Assessor Series jobs are unique, as are their reported values. HR managers are best armed and protected with two or more surveys, ideally at least three, gathered from disparate sources via different methodologies. ERI's order system contains 24,000 subscribers, and Assessor Series datasets are used exclusively in 17 IRS offices, by most Fortune 500 companies, in federal tax courts, etc., all proof positive that your library of surveys might be greatly enhanced with ERI's low cost package series (see ERI's Consultant Assessor Series®). Accurately knowing your competitive position in the marketplace is often money well spent. In summary, ERI results must be different than our competitors' results. We have a different mix of employers reporting, supplement data with methodologies both distinct and patented, and utilize a unique construct of job descriptions and jobs reported. We believe the before described methodology allows us to report salary survey values for new and emerging jobs long before "real data" are reported by competing surveys. We report data and not opinions.

Copyright © 2008-2010 ERI Economic Research Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.
ERI Economic Research Institute is an Authorized User of selected Statistics Canada data
under Agreement Number 6184. ERI's intellectual property rights include Patent Nos. 6,862,596 and 7,647,322,
"System and method for retrieving and displaying data, such as economic data relating to
salaries, cost of living and employee benefits."

Date last updated: 11/23/08