Entry-level workers here saw more of an increase in their starting pay last year than did their mid-career counterparts, an annual compensation survey says.


Thats what we call salary compression, says Bill Sweigert, director of consulting services at Associated Industries of the Inland Northwest, the Spokane-based employers group that conducts the survey. The gap has narrowed a little bit.


When the survey was conducted in August and September, 49 percent of the 90 employers who responded said that they had raised the starting wage they paid to their entry-level workers in the previous 12 months. The average increase was 4.5 percent.


Slightly more employers52 percentsaid they had boosted starting wages for their non-entry-level jobs, but the average increase was lower, at 3.9 percent.


The surveys findings run counter to a national trend, Sweigert says. Nationally, surveys seem to show professionals and managerial (employees) getting a slightly higher percentage of raise than the entry-level jobs, he says.


The top performers at companies that have formal merit-pay systems fared the best in the period covered by the survey, Sweigert says: Their pay raises averaged 6.5 percent. Fewer than half of the respondents to the Associated Industries survey, however, reported that they have formal merit-pay systems in place. Most private employers use an ad hoc merit approach in their pay systems, he says.


Associated Industries revamped the survey this year. At one time, data on incentive pay and bonuses was contained in a separate section, but now that information is listed with the compensation data under individual job categories, Sweigert says.


With the new format, its easy to see how many employers in a given sector pay bonuses and how big, on average, those bonuses are, he says.


While Sweigert says its unlikely that wage information changed much after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, its possible that participation in the annual survey fell this year because of the turmoil experienced by companies and individuals in the aftermath of that event. Typically, 110 to 120 companies have taken part in the survey, compared with just 90 this year, he says.


The full results of the compensation survey are available to Associated Industries members for $135, and to nonmembers for $295.