Less salary increase for engineers

says case study
Published at 08.03.2010, 15:02
Two years after the start of the economic crisis take off the salary increases for the engineers. In the cross-industry comparison, the engineers are still suspended, although they could reduce the difference to engineers from other industries.

Could the engineers in Germany from 2008 to 2009 even with expected salary increases averaging 2.7%, were built last year only 1.8%. This year is the management consulting firm Kienbaum, on their current remuneration report to engineers in management and professional positions with a rise of 1.5%.

Civil engineers improve in the industry compared to others

This is the result of the consulting firm is taking the data analysis of 635 companies and 4802 individual items. The impact of the economic crisis were felt more clearly, the opinion of Christian Näser, compensation expert at Kienbaum.



Starting salaries of civil engineers for years are significantly lower than that of young professionals in the IT, chemical, pharmaceutical, mechanical engineering or electronics and electrical engineering. Had the difference amount to the comparison industries in the years 2004 to 2006 in some cases even 20% or more, so the engineers were able to reduce significantly in the three years 2007 to 2010 the gap to more than 10% to 15%. However, the average salaries are higher for young professionals in the construction industry continue to under 40,000 € a year.

A look at the content development management functions confirms this trend: while a project manager is replaced in the residential construction industry an average annual total amount of 55.000 €, will project managers across all industries paid on average with 66,000 euros per year, or 20% more. Since 2007, a slight reduction of this difference of 21% is observed on average 16%. For building managers reveals a similar trend. This also plays a large role Experience: Position holder with more than ten years of professional experience can shorten the distance to up to 10%.

Total Kienbaum has identified the decline in variable compensation due to the economic crisis, an approximation of the total salaries comparable to senior positions in other industries. The compensation experts at Kienbaum lead to this as the reason that engineers were in the construction industry tend to have lower variable proportions and would not fall in bonus payments thus impact as strong as in other engineering fields.

Commercial real estate industry pays more

But apart from the content, industry differences can also within the different fields make up the construction industry salary differences: solar civil engineers earn on Industrial services in the specialist functions average of 5% to 10% more than in commercial property construction. Depending on the size and complexity of the project, the difference in compensation management functions and several years of work experience even amount to more than 15%.