Benefits February 6, 2004

NACE Releases Survey of Starting Salaries

February 6, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Hiring mangaers are wooing most college recruits with increases in starting salaries this year, with only a third of disciplines seeing a decrease in starting salaries, compared to nearly half at the same time last year according to a new survey.
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Employers surveyed expected there to be an average 12.7% increase in college-grad hires this year, which would be the first hiring increase in two years, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ (NACE )latest quarterly starting-salary survey.

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Computer engineering and chemical engineering firns were shelling out the highest starting salaries for employees with those degrees – at $53,117 and $52,563, respectively. While the salary for computer engineers was only a slight increase, 0.7%, the chemical engineering salary shows a 2.5% rise.

The industry with the largest pay increase was computer science, for which starting salaries rose 8.9% to $48,646, with more than half the offers recorded in the survey at more than $50,000.

Other starting salaries in industries showing pay increases were:

  • Mechanical engineering, $49,088, 2.0%
  • Industrial/Manufacturing engineering, $48,283, 0.4%
  • Information sciences, $42,108, 2.6%
  • Accounting, $42,045, 0.1%
  • Management info systems/Business data processing, $41,103, 1.3%
  • Economics/Finance, $40,596, 0.5%
  • Logistics/Materials management, $40,484, 3.5% /li>
  • Business administration, $37,368, 2.0%
  • Marketing, $36,071, 1.0%
  • Liberal arts majors (surveyed as a group), $30,153, 3.5%

Only five groups showed smaller starting salaries this year:

  • Electrical engineering, $49,926, -1.4%
  • Construction science, $41,232, -3.7%
  • Civil engineering, $41,046, -1.2%
  • Nursing, $37,253, -4.3%
  • Psychology, $25,032, -8%

The winter survey included 2,300 offers, a smaller number than those in its fall survey which covered those made through the previous August.

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