David Lowe, Employment Relations Manager for the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern).

Pay rates for skills rising over twice as fast as for unskilled: Wage survey

Pay rates are pushing up faster than last year, and for skilled people, pay is rising over twice as fast than for semi-skilled or unskilled people according to the latest employers' National Wage & Salary Survey.

Though the average wage increase in the survey was 4.5 per cent for the year ended August, (3.8 per cent in 2006) wage increases for unskilled employees averaged only 2.4 per cent, said David Lowe, Employment Relations Manager for the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern).

"But pay rates for skilled administrators and management went up 6.6 per cent over the year," he said.

The Survey has been run for 14 years and is New Zealand's most comprehensive measure of remuneration trends, he added. This year 745 employers contributed data for 48,477 employees across 214 job types in 19 industry sectors. (Pay rates for 30 job categories are listed on the EMA website).

The survey covers all remuneration related income and measures trends in other benefits such as superannuation schemes and holidays. "Overall the biggest increases tended to be in office jobs with lower rates of increase in areas such as production supervisors, fitters, and skilled warehouse work," Mr Lowe said.

Since unskilled people averaged wage increases of 1.7 per cent less than everyone else in 2006, its obvious that over time lower skilled people do fall behind.

The good news is the incentives to people to up skill themselves are evident in terms of higher wage packets.

The biggest movers in the pay stakes this year were: skilled shop salespeople (up an average 9.9 per cent; Managing directors with 50 to 199 staff (up 9.5 per cent); registered electricians (up 9.2 per cent); registered nurses (up 9.1 per cent); and diesel motor mechanics (up 8.4 per cent).

Some key points from the survey are: