Editor’s note: Rather than listing the results in alphabetical order, the states below are listed based on the total number of responses from a state. At the end of the article, the reader will notice some states are grouped together. RDH reasoned that the responses from individual states in these groups were too low, and we elected to calculate the results from similar states in a region as a group.
For no particular reason, we established 20 as the minimum number of responses that we would analyze as individual states. So we apologize to Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Oregon who came close (19 responses each). Fortunately, we did not think that the incorporation of data from neighboring states affected the averages too much.
We certainly encourage responses from all readers in all states next year.
For the most part, employers tend to favor hourly rates rather than daily rates. However, when enough information was provided about the latter form of pay, we tried to incorporate that information also.
You will notice an amount less than 100 percent when adding together the percentages of those who do not earn bonuses or commissions and those who earn at least part of their income through commissions. The difference consists of those who just earn bonuses. Since bonuses can consist of any imaginable incentive for a wide variety of professional accomplishments, there are no details about this group of income earners below.
As for those who work for commission, RDH will attempt to provide details about related employment arrangements in the 2006 survey.
Finally, several readers wrote notes on a “hard copy” of their survey responses that they first tried to respond via the magazine’s Web site. But they ran into technical problems in answering the questions online. We apologize for the inconvenience, and will keep trying to provide a format that is “user friendly” to as many personal computers as possible. Click here to view 2005 Salary Survey