The Huntsville/North Alabama chapter of the STC (Society for Technical Communicators) has sponsored a yearly salary survey since 1999. The survey is sent to technical communication professional with job functions such as writer, editor, graphic designer, web developer, and manager. For the past two years, the survey has been a mail-in survey. This year we posted the survey online from October 16 to November 2, 2001.
To solicit participation, we sent emails to a distribution list of 168 technical communicators in the Huntsville/North Alabama area describing this year’s survey and giving instructions to access the survey online. We also asked these people to encourage other technical communicators at their workplace to take the survey. The participants had the option of requesting a hard copy of the survey to mail in instead of participating online (only four chose the hard-copy option). Participants could also enter a contest to win either $100.00 or a membership in the STC ($140.00 value). This year's contest winner, from a drawing at the December STC meeting, was April Yager of Sirsi.
Gender: Of the 119 respondents to the survey, the majority were women (70%). Women also dominated the technical communication field in the 2001 National STC Salary Survey and the 2001 Atlanta STC Salary Survey. Women make less than men in all categories. (See the Spry report.)
Education: 57% of respondents reported a Bachelors degree and 28% a Masters degree. In 2000, 66% of the respondents had a Bachelors and 24% a Masters degree.
Demographic Analysis (salaried respondents only, base = 103): The mean salary for entry-level respondents was $38,214 (7 respondents). The majority of respondents (35%) were in mid-level, non-supervisory positions, with a mean salary of $43,333. The computer software industry employed the majority of respondents (40%, 41 respondents), and this group had a mean salary of $47,900.
Compensation Analysis (salaried respondents only, base = 113): The
majority of respondents were writers (50%, 57 respondents), and reported a mean
salary of $49,327 (median $47,500). The mean salary for those with the job
function graphics/layout/DTP (13
respondents) was $47,956 (median $43,000). The mean salary for editors
(10 respondents) was $46,786 (median $42,500). The highest and lowest reported salaries were for
web developers, with one reporting under $25,000, and another reporting a salary in
the range of $85,001-$90,000 (median $42,500). The next lowest salary was for a writer with
less than two years' experience, reported in the range of $25,001-$30,000.
The mean for writers with less than two years' experience was $34,500. Over half
of the writers responding had 11 to 25 years of experience and were earning a
mean salary of from $51,731 to $55,500.
Compensation Analysis, Median Salaries: Only
mean salaries are reported in the data tables cited above because that is how STC National
and the Atlanta chapter reported salary data. STC National and Atlanta
gathered actual salaries, however, while we collected salary in $5000 ranges,
and figured the mean by taking the middle of each range. We report
the median in this narrative summary and in a separate summary table to somewhat compensate for that
discrepancy. The median is the salary halfway down the list of
respondents. For example, taking the surveys of the 57 writers and
arranging them from highest to lowest salary, the median salary would be that
reported on survey #29 in the list (half of the salaries are below that number,
half above it).
Recommendations for Next Survey: