2009 Salary Survey: The Full Report

By  Susan Nunziata

In keeping with the challenges faced by workers everywhere in a period of economic recession, the average mobile enterprise executive is working harder than he did last year and receiving fewer benefits, while his salary has remained flat.

These are the results of the second annual Mobile Enterprise salary survey, which was fielded to Mobile Enterprise readers in June and July 2009. Respondents were asked to report their annual salaries for the calendar years 2007 and 2008.

The average respondent to this year's survey is a 52-year-old male in an IT management role who earned $113,206 in 2008, a mere 1.14% more than the $111,914 he earned in 2007. He's been in his industry for 21 years or more and has held his current position for 2.5 of those years.

He spends fewer than 10 hours a week as a mobile employee (meaning that he is not performing his job at a specific desk in his company's office). He's one of 750 employees at his enterprise, which brought in revenues of more than $5 billion in 2008.

For the purposes of this report, we're broadly defining the mobile executive as anyone who is actively involved in deploying or using mobile devices, software, and/or wireless networks for their enterprises.

The figures comparing average salaries in 2008 and 2007 (Figs. 2 and 4) are derived from responses to our 2009 questionnaire. These are not a comparison between our 2009 and 2008 survey results. This is because the profile of our 2009 survey respondents differs in several ways from those who took our 2008 survey, most notably in the vertical markets served and the size of company.

The 287 respondents to our 2009 Salary Survey are employed at enterprises of varying sizes across a range of vertical markets.

The verticals with the greatest number of respondents include:

• Government (non-military, non-public safety)
• Manufacturing
• Healthcare (medical/pharmaceutical/hospital)
• Education
• Retail/e-business
• Travel/hospitality
• Cable/telecommunications
• Financial/banking/legal

More than four in 10 respondents (42.2%) make financial decisions related to the purchasing and deployment of mobile and/or wireless solutions in their enterprise; of these, 26.5% also have operational responsibility for those solutions (Fig. 1). More than one fifth of respondents (22.3%) say they're users of mobile or wireless devices, software or networks in their enterprises but have no decision-making or operational responsibility for these solutions.

Flat Is The New Up

Respondents in 2009 span a range of job functions, including C-level (15.3%), CTO/CIO (4.6%), IT Management (28.5%) and non-IT Management (15.3%) (Fig. 3). Salaries remained flat for most respondents. Those in IT management saw the largest percentage increase in their annual salaries from 2007 to 2008 (Fig. 4).

Only 52% of respondents report receiving a salary increase in the past 12 months; of these, 67% report receiving a raise in the range of 2%-4%. A handful of respondents (16.3%) report having their salaries reduced in the past 12 months. Of these, 24% say their salaries were cut by 5%, while nearly one fifth (19%) say they took a 10% salary reduction.

For benefits beyond salary (Fig. 5) and average number of hours worked per week (Fig. 6) we compare data from our 2008 and 2009 surveys. The differences are striking, particularly the increase in the average number of hours worked per week and the decline in some of the "soft" benefits such as paid sick time, tuition assistance, and parking/transit expense reimbursement.

While these trends are certainly consistent with what is being reported in the overall economy, some of the discrepancies in hours worked and benefits beyond salary may be attributable to variances in the size of the enterprises and the vertical markets represented by individual respondents year-on-year.

More than a third (36%) of our 2009 respondents spend fewer than 10 hours a week as a "mobile" employee (meaning they are not performing their jobs at a specific desk in their company's office), while nearly as many (32%) are mobile between 10-19 hours per week (Fig. 7).

The majority of respondents (57%) have been in their respective industries for 21 years or more. More than a third (36%) have held their current positions for between one and five years, while 28% have been in their current jobs for six to 10 years. Nearly nine out of 10 respondents (87.8%) are male.

About the Mobile Enterprise 2009 Salary Survey

This survey was conducted over a six-week period in June and July 2009 by Mobile Enterprise. The survey responses were obtained by sending an email invitation to Mobile Enterprise subscribers that asked respondents to participate in the survey using a web-based form. A drawing to win one of two $50 Visa Gift Cheques was offered as an incentive to complete the survey. Three reminder invitations were sent to those that did no respond to the initial survey. A total of 287 respondents entered the survey. Some respondents did not complete all aspects of every question. Mobile Enterprise performed the random drawing to select the winners of the incentive.