24th Annual Salary & Job Satisfaction Survey: Cents of Status Quo
In the face of rising medical insurance payments and increasing workloads, food industry professionals are staying at their jobs longer.
Steady as she goes. If there was one overarching message in Food Engineering's 2004 Salary and Job Satisfaction Survey, that was it. Food industry professionals are remaining at their jobs longer, despite increasing workloads, modest raises and increased medical insurance payments. Does that mean they are content? Not necessarily. "Up to 70 percent of all professionals are either actively or passively looking at any given point in time," says Wade Palmer, a headhunter in the food and beverage industry for 30 years and president of www.careersinfood.com.
In fact, when it comes to money, nearly two-thirds of FE respondents received salary increases. Nearly half of the survey respondents reported salary increases of 3 percent or less and another 28 percent of respondents said their salaries increased by 4-5 percent. These figures are pretty much inline with the nation as a whole. According to a WorldatWork survey of human resource directors, the average salary increase in the US this year was 3.5 percent.