28th Annual Salary Survey

According to the findings of Logistics Management’s 28th Annual Salary Survey, average earnings and compensation have actually leveled off over the past year. However, our research team also found that an aging workforce is giving way to younger, more highly trained professionals who also happen to be savvy technologists. For the logistics professionals who have adopted today’s technological tools, higher salaries are clearly corresponding.

But our research team warns that the cutting edge skills that newlyhired workers might have coming out of college are going to be obsolete in three years to five years, so they have to determine how to keep improving in key areas such as decision analysis, IT tools, cross-functional and cross organizational teaming, as well as finance.

Also worth noting, say our researchers, is that now, more than ever, experience pays. Young people joining the workforce should aim to grow within their current organization, rather than chasing after that better offer. In fact, our survey indicates that the long-term payoff could be substantial.

This year’s results, based on 801 qualified LM reader respondents, indicate that 64 percent did see a modest salary increase in 2011. Of that number, the average bump was 6 percent.

Educators and executive recruiters echoed this sentiment during interviews in the weeks immediately following the release of this year’s salary survey data.

“Talent management—recruitment, development, and retention—is an increasing challenge across many fronts in supply chain management as the discipline and business becomes more complex,” says Dr. Theodore Stank, professor of logistics at the University of Tennessee. He says that the move toward e-commerce is just one way that “old dogs” have to learn new tricks, while companies are also struggling to find people with good decision analysis skills in order to use all of the new data available to them.

The Logistics Management and PRG research teams also found that logistics professionals with a skill set including information technology are among the highest paid. This did not surprise Stank. His advice for young and old alike is to “stay thirsty, my friends.” He believes that everyone at a management level must be committed to a lifetime of learning.