Employees can look forward to a little more money next year, as employers plan to implement salary increases, according to the results of Mercer’s 2011 Canadian Compensation Planning Survey.
Since 2005, Canada has moved from a relatively stable economy to stalled GDP growth and rising unemployment, said Iain Morris, market business leader with Mercer, speaking on September 8 in Toronto.
But although Morris admits that these are “pretty difficult times,” he’s positive. “There’s a cautious optimism in the marketplace,” he said, “and we should look to that as we look toward 2011.”
That optimism is evident with the decrease in salary freezes, which have dropped significantly in the last two years. On an all-employee basis, 31% of companies had salary freezes in 2009. This dropped to 6% in 2010 and is projected at 2% for 2011.
And while salary freezes are waning, salary increases are holding steady, at 2.9% for 2011. This is close to the actual budgets of the last two years—2.9% (2010) and 3.1% (2009). The oil and gas, natural resources and pharmaceutical/biotech industries are leading the way in terms of the largest salary increase budgets, with 3.4%, 3.2% and 3.2%, respectively. The wholesale/retail sector projects the lowest increase, at 2.7%.
Mercer’s 2011 Compensation Planning Survey polled 605 organizations and approximately 850,000 non-unionized employees.
