Salary.com Reports Moms in U.S. Would Earn $116,805 while Moms in Canada Would Earn $126,593

Published on May 9, 2008 - 7:05:10 AM

By: Salary.com

Waltham, MA, May 8, 2008 -- Salary.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SLRY), a leading provider of on-demand compensation and talent management solutions, announced today the results of its annual Mom Salary Survey. Salary.com has revised the calculation to reflect the impact of company size on mom's compensation. For 2008, Salary.com determined that the time mothers spend performing the 10 most popular "Mom job functions" would equate to an annual cash compensation of $116,805 for a Stay-at-Home Mom and $68,405 for a Working Mom, down from last years calculations of $138,094 and $85,938.

Salary.com leveraged its new CompAnalyst global market data to benchmark the mom jobs in Canada, which would equate to $126,593 for Stay-at-Home Moms and $74,101 for Working Moms (reported in Canadian dollars). The job titles that best matched a mom's definition of her work in both countries are (in order of hours spent per week): housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, laundry machine operator, computer operator, psychologist, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive officer and janitor.

"This is Salary.com's eighth year looking at the value of mom's work and there's always a tremendous amount of interest in why we value the job of mom. Since 2000, Salary.com has become known as the experts in valuing the jobs people do. In 2001, we realized we didn't have one of the most important jobs of all – the job of mom. Through our mom survey, we've been able to recognize the critical value of what moms do and educate the public on the different factors that determine the compensation of a particular job," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com, Inc.

Since its inception, the Mom Salary Survey has been enhanced to reflect feedback such as adding salary ranges for Working Moms, Stay-at-Home Moms and Working Dads. The survey data has been incorporated into the Mom SalaryWizard, an online tool where consumers can personalize the survey data to reflect their time spent per job in an average week. The Mom SalaryWizard shows users how factors such as geography and the mix of various mom jobs can impact compensation and can either increase or decrease the mom salary from the national median Salary.com publishes every year.

This year, Salary.com adjusted the mom salary benchmark based on a key factor that affects pay - company size - and provided a more complete view using total cash compensation for the mom job. Previously, the survey was based on the national median base salary for all company sizes.

"Smaller organizations typically pay less. By using data for companies with fewer than 25 employees-offset slightly by the addition of annual bonuses-we saw a net decrease in U.S mom's pay of nearly $21K from 2007. We believe this is a valuable way to help educate the average person about the factors affecting compensation and how employers determine pay," said Coleman.

The primary driver of mom's six-figure salary, however, remains the amount of overtime worked. This year, mom's overtime averaged 54.4 hours per week. According to the Salary.com survey, Stay-at-Home Moms work a 94.4 hour "workweek" – over half her time spent on the job is overtime. The Working Moms reported an average 54.6 hour "mom work week" in addition to their paying jobs.

Salary.com created the Mom Job based on Certified Compensation Professional* benchmarking principles to determine the value of a job. Following these employer-based principles, it is important to match jobs based on their job descriptions not just job titles. In Mom's case, her role is an example of a hybrid job with 10 different jobs-each with different salaries-that comprise her job. In the Mom Salary Survey, 18,000 moms quantified their hours worked in each role for a typical week. Salary.com's compensation professionals weighted the different responsibilities of the job to determine mom's overall total compensation.

*Certified Compensation Professional is a registered trademark of WorldatWork.

About Mom Salary Wizard

Moms and their families can visit http://mom.salary.com and create their own "mom paycheck" with the Mom Salary Wizard, the first interactive tool that allows moms and their families to price the "mom job," based on location and mom's personal hours worked in each of the 10 roles. Users can create a hypothetical mom paycheck and mom pay stub, which can be printed and emailed to family and friends for Mother's Day. For more detailed information on the Stay-at-Home and Working Mom compensation analysis as well as the Mom Salary Wizard, log on to http://mom.salary.com.

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