Salary Analysis Report

The Salary Analysis report compares the average or median pay between males and females and between the established racial groups. Groups can be broken down by department, job, job group, EEO category, salary code, Similarly Situated Employee Groups (SSEGs), or company-wide. This report is often sorted and run by contractors using many different methods in order to duplicate the analyses commonly performed by OFCCP during the desk-audit phase of a Compliance Review, but a sort by job or SSEG.

Each report displays the number of employees and the average or median (or both as shown below) pay by race and gender. The race and gender group with the highest compensation is highlighted and listed first. In the example below, the average pay of the male and white employees in the Housekeeping job are higher than those of females and other racial groups, and are therefore highlighted and listed first, serving as the base groups against which females and the other races are compared. The dollar difference and relative percentage difference in pay between the base group and the other groups is displayed. This report does not indicate a pass/fail scenario, but merely compares salaries by average or median methods.

Median Compensation Analysis

The median is one way to describe the mid point of the group of salaries being analyzed. It is the salary figure that is larger than or equal to half of the other salaries and equal to or smaller than the other half of the salaries. It is easier to identify the median if the items are arranged in ascending or descending order. For example, in the following group of salaries the median is $19,334, since $19,334 is the number at the middle of the distribution.

$32,988
$19,552
$19,344
$18,304
$18,264

If there were an even number of salaries in the distribution, the median is determined by computing the average of the middle two salaries. For example, in the group of salaries below the median would be $32,465, which is the average of $33,022 and $31,900, which are the middle two salaries.

$35,704
$33,255
$33,022
$31,900
$29,786
$28,659

Analysis of median salary is useful because very high or very low salaries in the distribution do not affect it. A comparison of median instead of average salaries may be more appropriate when the group contains a small number of extreme salaries.

Average Compensation Analysis

The average, or the arithmetic mean is another method of describing the mid point of a group of salaries being analyzed. The average is computed by adding the salaries in a distribution of salaries being analyzed, and then dividing their sum by the number of salaries. Analysis of average salary is useful for comparing groups of larger sizes; for example comparing the average salary of a large group of men to the average salary of many women.

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