Are you looking for the next step in your career? Not sure what path to take? Our new 2010 Project Management Salary Survey might provide some insight. We recently partnered with TenStep, a leader in global project management consulting, to develop a salary survey specifically for the project management industry. After receiving over 2,000 responses from professionals in more than 100 countries, we realized that it is a very exciting time to be a project manager. For me the most surprising finding of this survey was that regardless of where a project manager resides (worldwide), they are extremely well paid.
Take a look at this data and compare it to the expectations of your own career path, it could be time for a change. Worldwide, having a PMP certification is an automatic increase in salary of nearly $5,000 a year. For every additional year that certification is held, salary will increase by another $439 a year. I was curious how a project manager’s pay in less industrialized regions such as Africa would compare to that of other workers in those regions. In Africa, the average daily income is around $7 but a project manager in Africa can make up to $140 a day.
I asked our president, David Mantica, what he found to be the most interesting finding of this survey, and he shared my sentiment:
“I was astonished at the high level of compensation Project Management professionals receive. Even from a world-wide perspective the pay for Project Managers and professionals doing project management work is well above the average per capita income. It certainly is a profession to enter into if you are seeking long term compensation that is well above average.”
Another surprising, yet not so exciting finding of the 2010 Project Management Salary Survey was the pay chasm between men and women. In North America alone, a female project manager makes nearly $4,500 less each year than their male counterpart. Worldwide, they make nearly $5,000 less each year. Unfortunately, the project management profession is still in the process of becoming fiscally more female friendly. The upside of this is that the potential is there. A project manager, not just a male project manager, can make over $120K a year. The opportunity for women to penetrate this field and obtain the maximum salary potential is there, and the stats in this survey prove it. Age and experience might also play a small role in these statistics. Equality of women in the corporate world is still a relatively new yet rapidly growing concept. The number of women entering these industries is colossal compared to that of only ten years ago. The average age of project managers is between the ages of 40 – 60 with 10 to 20+ years experience. Considering this, ten years from now we may see the dissolution of this pay chasm.
For a full analysis on the findings of this survey, visit our SDLC Free Offers page to download the whitepaper: The New 2010 Project Management Salary Survey. On Wednesday, August 4th we will be presenting a free web seminar to present these findings, as well. To read more about this web seminar, register, and view our other free web seminars visit our Free Web Seminars from ASPE-SDLC page.
If you are interested in becoming a certified PMP, check out our course The Project Management Professional (PMP®) Certification Exam Boot Camp and The Complete PMP® v4.0 Study Guide. To view a full listing of all the project management courses we offer visit ASPE-SDLC’s Three-Level Project Management Curriculum of courses page.
It is sad to see that there still is a gender inequity when it comes to PM salaries. Many of the best project managers that I know are women. They deserve to be compensated equally to their male counterparts. Let's do our part to equalize the salaries and eridcate this phenomon in future salary surveys.
We agree, Brian. We hope that promoting these findings will be help raise awareness of this issue.