Nearly 50% unhappy with what they earn

Employers, please take note. The verdict is out - nearly half of the Indian workforce across 8 industry sectors are unhappy with the salaries they take home.

According to the first Monster Salary Index (MSI) released on Tuesday, just 51-52 per cent of a sample size of 35,929 employees from Manufacturing, Healthcare, Construction, Legal & Market Consultancy, BFSI, Education & Research, IT/ITeS/Telecom/ICT, and Transport & Logistics are satisfied with their salaries while the rest feel they deserve much more.

IT sector employees earn the most, at an average of Rs 341.8 per hour, which is much higher than the gross median hourly wage of Rs 252.3 per hour across the 8 sectors. BFSI employees earn the second highest salaries at Rs 291.0 per hour. While Manufacturing takes home below average salaries at Rs 230.9 per hour; Education & Research records the lowest median salary at Rs 186.5 per hour.

Talking to the Business Line about some of the findings of the MSI, Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster.com, India/Middle East/Southeast Asia/Hong Kong said “The median salary gap between the highest paying IT industry and the lowest paying Education & Research industry is a high 45 per cent. While 63.8 per cent of IT sector employees expressed satisfaction with work-life balance, the sector is not immune to gender gap - on average, women earn around 34 per cent less than men. IT employees feel they are being underpaid even though their salaries are on par with their global counterparts; as they do not have data for comparison. Although Manufacturing employees received below average median salaries they were the most satisfied, as they took home annual bonuses, performance bonuses and also got paid for overtime.”

Pointing out that the low salaries paid to employees in Education & Research which is responsible for generating skills, does not bode well for the country, Modi said “If you look at the ‘Make in India’ initiative, there is huge scope to push economic activity in the country if the Government and Private sectors increase investments in Education & Research. Remarkably, 60 per cent of employees in this sector are satisfied with their lives regardless of low compensation and absence of performance bonuses.”

Another interesting trend that will prevail, is that employers will bring more employees under the net, for profit sharing by giving out ESOPs/bonuses rather than resort to big salary increases. “Profit sharing by employers can be done in 3 ways – annual bonus, performance bonus and ESOPs. While 20 per cent of employees get annual bonus and 21 per cent get performance bonus, just 4 per cent have received ESOPs. There is huge scope to engage, retain and motivate employees and employers will resort to different ways of profit sharing rather than dole out 30-40 per cent salary increases” said Modi.

The MSI serves both employers and job seekers. While employers can use it to make informed decisions by analysing the salary market and optimising employee remuneration; job seekers looking for opportunities in India and abroad can use it as a benchmark for negotiating salaries. MSI is a joint initiative of Monster India, Netherlands based, WageIndicator Foundation, Paycheck India and IIM-Ahmedabad; and is the result of two years of data analyses from January 2012 – December 2014.

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