Feature: Salary Trends in UK MR 2001-12
February 15 2013
Here are the best set of mean salary stats for the UK MR industry you're ever likely to see. Best as in good, solid bases and careful compilation; and the average rise is not bad either. But there's one shocker, and it doesn't take a great analyst to spot it. MrWeb's Nick Thomas continues our celebrations for job no. 100,000.
The source
Advertising most of the job vacancies in UK market research over the last 12 years or so has given us a great opportunity to come up with some definitive figures on how research salaries move over time. Add to this the fact that we read each one and code the level of seniority we think it represents, and the opportunity is too good to miss.
You can view the mean salary for each level, for all ads currently appearing on the site, any day in a table halfway down the html version of our Daily Research News email. For longer term stats, you have to wait for our occasional summaries - here's the latest and most comprehensive.
By way of a caution, note that these are advertised salaries and may not always tally with those of existing employees (a thorny issue if ever there were) - and that they mostly reflect just the money part of package, not pension and health schemes for example. Use with care, therefore - but the trends and differences are very illuminating I think. See bottom, by the way, for some quick definitions of the categories we use.
The general picture - not bad considering
| | Mean salary 2001-2 | Mean salary 2011-12 | Increase £ | Increase % |
|
| Entry Level RE: | £17,900 (167) | £21,600 (277) | 3,700 | 20.7 |
| RE: | £22,900 (747) | £24,800 (1270) | 1,900 | 8.3 |
| SRE: | £27,800 (1061) | £29,400 (2197) | 1,600 | 5.8 |
| Project Manager: | £31,000 (482) | £37,200 (2363) | 6,200 | 20 |
| Research Manager: | £35,500 (574) | £44,800 (640) | 9,300 | 26.2 |
| AD: | £39,100 (560) | £51,800 (2200) | 12,700 | 32.5 |
| Director: | £54,800 (288) | £74,000 (1017) | 19,200 | 35 |
Figures in brackets are bases for each calculation
If there's an overall comment, it would be that increases have not been bad! I'll need to qualify that three ways:
- we used to consider ourselves fairly low payers as an industry
- inflation has been low throughout
- the last 4-5 years, obviously, have been hard for most sectors and we wouldn't expect big rises between 2008 and 2013.
Between 2000 and 2008, mean salaries for all except two job levels grew at a very respectable rate. Graduate / JRE types were given *more* enticement at least to enter the profession, 'though the entry salary remains no more than acceptable, something we'll look at in site features in the months to come. From agency side project manager level (just above SRE) and upwards, this period of eight years saw rises above inflation and in some cases (ADs and some very senior roles) the rise was impressive.
Since 2008 fortunes (perhaps the wrong word in discussing MR salaries) have been more mixed, with ADs continuing their rise, and Directors and above consolidating the major gains of 2003-7 surprisingly well. Agency side project managers have nudged upwards but more slowly, as have JREs, and salaries for client side RM roles have changed little - I don't think the slight increase in the latter reflects higher salaries for comparable roles, so much as an increase in slightly more senior RM positions (hey, could this be a sign of more respect for MR? Another one to discuss later). Between 2000 and 2008, by the way, client side RMs also did very well.
The Big But
So we come to the elephant in the room - and indeed this elephant will carry whole agencies on its back for just a few currant buns a week. How do we expect to keep good people in the profession if to get to the sunlit uplands of adequately-paid Project and Account Management they have to serve their two years chained to the oar reserved for Senior Research Executives?
I love mixed metaphors - my apologies to those now trying to picture elephants rowing galleys. But don't miss the point here:
Just consider, this is a ten-year period, and the TOTAL increase in mean SRE pay in that time has been 5.8%.
Recruitment consultants tell me constantly that the real shortage of good candidates is not at the senior levels in our profession, but around the middle - from SRE upwards. From my own experience, I know how and why good researchers leave the profession. In the company I worked for there were five SREs one minute and two the next. One left to try his hand at advertising creative; one to be a management consultant; one to be a furniture designer. I know that's only a sample of three, but it's a good illustration I think.
Anything other than market research. Each of them was suddenly under a lot of stress - Friday afternoons in Field they used to crack open a bottle of wine, but in the execs room it looked like the opening credits of the old Charlie's Angels - indeed, one of them was good looking and into martial arts, perhaps the furniture making was just a front.
Elsewhere, SREs had roughly the same deal. My agency was smallish but at one of the big ones, an SRE friend took me to the local pizza place and said 'this is where we come most nights, cos they're open till 1am' - that was him and the other SREs, and occasionally a co-sufferer from up or down the ladder putting in a shift.
We've complained about SRE salaries every time we've done salary stats on MrWeb. It never changes and it never ceases to amaze me. I'm quite surprised also to see, at the end of a decade of monitoring this, that the RE figure is not much better. Generally, people with one to four years' experience are considered 'gold dust' by recruiters but they're not given much of our gold, and the two are almost certainly connected.
Why?
I have two theories about this, other than just that research employers are mean to REs and SREs. The first is that these years are used to winnow out the chaff, as it were - those who have an aptitude are swiftly moved on up to PM level and get more money, while those who don't are stalled and, basically, given every excuse for leaving. But almost all the anecdotal evidence / that of my own eyes and ears suggests this is not the case. If it were, PMs would be doing most of the useful work, covering for the not-very-useful SREs, and this is clearly not how things are.
The second is that we're a bit in awe of business development (see Wednesday's piece on skills trends). We place too much emphasis on business-getting, and show downright disrespect for people who haven't yet started doing it, even when they are very, very useful members of the team with considerable skills and experience. Unlike theory one, I do see and hear some evidence of this. As per Wednesday's comments, I have nothing against getting people started on business development early, and actually suspect it's very useful in building a rounded, commercially-aware exec - but keep in mind the now-famous statistics about how much more it costs to get a new client than to hang onto an old one, and also consider what a lot of ads from highly successful agencies use phrases like 'we don't have to do too much selling as clients come to us'. A reputation for thorough and thoughtful research does a lot to help agencies 'sell' - and a good 'engine room' is vital to keep it.
Will all that opinion - backed up I hope you'll agree by at least one very striking, stand-out statistic - have any effect whatsoever on the stats we see in three or five years' time? I hope so, or I hope something will anyway. If your company is proud of the way it treats its execs between one and four or one and five years after graduation, tell us about it (with concrete examples please) and we'll try and feature some good practice in the jobs section in the Spring.
I'll add some more stats to this next week - check back, or
email me if you'd like a note and a link when they appear.
Next week, I'll be woffling about bringing talent into the profession, about the art and science of job advertising, and about threats and opportunities for researchers in the next few years. Thanks for all the milestone congratulations and the kind comments on features so far.
Nick Thomas
Appendix - levels of seniority
Here are some very quick definitions...
JRE: new to the profession, less than 12 months' experience, emphasis on learning the trade
RE: generally 1-3 years' experience, working with seniors on projects at most stages, emphasis split between useful input / pulling weight, and learning
SRE: generally 2 to 4.5 years' experience, lots of moderation, drafting of proposals and reports, work at all stages of projects and often basically running them but with topping and tailing / supervision. Will also be helping / sometimes managing REs and JREs
Project Manager (agency) or Account Manager: often 3 or 3.5 to 6 years' experience, main contact person for and 'owner of' clients, responsible for medium-sized projects from start to finish unsupervised. Still doing lots of hands-on work and managing juniors too.
AD: where experience is still talked about, often 7-10 years. Portfolio of clients and responsibility for team, often slightly more hands-off approach, can be a known figure in the industry and speaker at conferences etc.. Lots of bus dev but not a lot of input into the overall direction of the company.
Director plus: everything above this, up to and including CEOs of Honomichl firms. The mean salary figure for this group is therefore more interesting when compared over time, than as a snapshot where it means little.
Client side RM: those whose role is basically to draw up plans for research, manage agencies and disseminate research / insight among internal clients. Often 4-7 years of experience. More senior client side personnel can go into our AD and Director categories.
I haven't included everything we use here - some longer definitions will appear on the site in the Spring.
Bear in mind that *everybody's* definitions will differ, and the majority of positions do not match any of the above definitions exactly. If something is a particularly bad match, we'll often multicode it to ensure the right candidates don't miss it, and exclude it from salary calculations. We also exclude ads with particularly wide salary ranges specified, and of course those with no salary given.
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
