UK MR Job Market Resurgent

The UK research job market is increasingly buoyant, with numbers of vacancies increasing throughout most of 2004 and salaries beginning to rise, especially at senior and junior levels. The middle ranks are still waiting, particularly SREs, but there are signs of rises beginning here as well, according to the forthcoming October issue of MRWho.

Entry level RE / JRE positions have bounced back from a disappointing second half of 2003, to a salary above £19k (and in the third quarter this shows signs of moving ahead to a new record - currently around £20k). The number of such positions advertised in early 2004 was double that for the previous 6 months, although the rate has slowed down again since the end of June, to something like its late 2003 level.

There are some higher salaries for SREs emerging at present (many at £30k now, ie in July to September) but some lower figures are still holding the mean back. Interestingly, the most significant salary change of 2004 has been in the last few months and for the site's most senior category, Director plus - a large number of very highly paid jobs have lifted the mean for this group by more than £4,000 to over £60,000.

Client side RM level jobs have seen a slight dip in mean salary after recent strong rises. There has not been the big boom in numbers of such jobs that has been seen on the agency side. Associate Director salaries have recovered the ground they lost in late 2003 and are bounding ahead again, with the number of ads for ADs likely to be 40% up on last year's.

More detail and comparisons with earlier half years will appear in the next MRWho, subscription to which is free. The publication currently appears about once every two months and this issue should be out in mid-October. See www.mrweb.com/who for details / how to subscribe.

UK Market Research Vacancies 2004 - Mean Advertised Salaries on MrWeb

IMPORTANT: Bases are shown in brackets. Mean salaries are based on almost all jobs advertised on MrWeb in the given period that stated a salary or salary range. Some ads are individually excluded from the totals to avoid bias, for example where a range of salaries and titles is mentioned and it is not clear which part of the range applies to which levels. Benefits, bonuses, cars etc.. are not included. Mean salaries are as advertised and are not a guide to what should be expected or paid - there are of course many other factors to consider.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.