The featured story in the Project Management Institute’s PMI Today magazine was the results of the sixth edition of PMI’s Project Management Salary Survey. The highlight of the survey was that despite the ongoing recession, many project managers have reported salary increases; in fact, 51% of respondents (of which there were nearly 35,000 from 19 different countries) reported increases in total compensation over the past year, with 17% of respondents reporting salary increases of 5% or more.
This is good news for project managers, though I don’t think it is great news – after all, salaries were predicted to rise worldwide during 2010, with global base salary increases projected to rise from 1.90 percent in 2009 to 2.88 percent in 2010. These figures may have been optimistic, but the realization that only half of the project managers who responded to this survey received salary increases isn’t exceptional.
Regardless, the article was interesting and filled with juicy facts, which of course I’m way into. Here are some of the highlights (all dollar figures are in USD):
- In six major countries, PMP-certified project managers reported a $10,000 salary advantage over non-PMP-certified project managers
- The number of years of experience in project management has a huge impact on salary. In Singapore, beginning project managers see a median salary of $36,116, with those in the business for 20 years seeing a salary of $144,280 – a 300% spread
- The size of the projects managed also contributes toward salary size. In the United States, project managers managing budgets of over $10 million earned 40% more money than those with projects under $100,000
- In Australia, the country where project management professionals reported the highest median income world-wide, project managers report a median salary of $116,625, program managers a median salary of $128,993, and project portfolio managers a median salary of $146,493.
The salaries of project management professionals varied widely per country, with Australia at the top of the list and China at the bottom. The annualized salary per country (in USD) looked like this:
| Australia | $116,625.00 |
| Germany | $110,267.00 |
| United States | $100,000.00 |
| United Kingdom | $92,244.00 |
| France | $89,406.00 |
| Canada | $87,409.00 |
| Japan | $84,000.00 |
| Italy | $74,505.00 |
| New Zealand | $74,290.00 |
| United Arab Emirates | $70,505.00 |
| Hong Kong | $64,500.00 |
| Saudi Arabia | $61,803.00 |
| Brazil | $59,715.00 |
| Singapore | $56,269.00 |
| South Korea | $50,510.00 |
| Mexico | $36,768.00 |
| India | $27,072.00 |
| Taiwan | $26,646.00 |
| China | $21,975.00 |
And for those who prefer charts, here’s a graphical representation of this data:
Average project management salary by country (in USD)
If you receive PMI’s monthly PM Network magazine, the PMI Today newsletter featuring this information should be a part of the package that you have probably already received for April. If not, and you’re a member of PMI, you can access a digital version of PMI Today on PMI’s web site.