This chapter gives a brief overview of salaries for white collar temporaries. A salary compensation breakdown by job description will be provided in later chapters pertaining to specific job categories. A Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that the average professional, executive, or technical temp makes more than $24 an hour and that average compensation is increasing each year.
Most temporary white collar employees are paid by the hour or by the project. It is very important that you agree with the staffing service as to what your pay will be before accepting any temporary assignment. Also, be aware that whereas traditionally staffing services have not provided any benefits to the temp, some staffing services are beginning to rethink this policy, especially for professional, executive, and administrative temps, and the growing trend in recent years is to provide at least health insurance coverage. Today, some staffing services are offering life insurance, benefit cafeteria plans, and other customary fringe benefits to the professional technical temp.
How do you determine what your pay will be? It is important that you know what your skills are worth on the open market. You should take into consideration your experience and what you have to offer that will make money for the staffing service.
Formula to Determine Pay
Traditionally, many staffing services have used a straight forward formula to calculate what they will pay their temp employees. Staffing services assume there are approximately 40 hours in a workweek. There are 52 weeks in a year. What staffing services do is multiply 40 hours times 52 weeks, which equals 2080 hours. They then divide 2080 hours into what the average annual salary is for the particular profession or occupation, and that determines what the temp will be paid per hour.
Ann had 10 years' experience as an employee relations analyst in Los Angeles when she was downsized; the for profit hospital where she worked was acquired by a national healthcare provider that already had its own trained staff of employment personnel and human resources professionals such as Ann. At first Ann tried to find full time employment similar to her old position. She used up her entire severance package while she pursued leads, networked, and even tried a headhunter or executive search firm without success. Then Ann started attending an outplacement clinic course where she met a wide range of consultants, professionals, executives, and administrators much like herself. Several of them remarked about their positive experiences working temp through a staffing service. So Ann decided this kind of work could help update her resume, provide supplemental income, and possibly connect to a wide pool of coworkers and administrators who could lead to other employment; due to the temporary nature of the work, she would still have the freedom to interview for other job positions. She registered with a professional temp firm and was offered a six month temporary employee relations job assisting the director of a statewide health maintenance organization (HMO).Ann's annual salary at her old job had been $45,000. She used the formula shown in Figure 3.1 to calculate what her annual salary would have been if she had been paid hourly:
$45,000 2080 = $21.63
Ann also now had to pick up her own benefits that her previous employer had provided. If she were to keep her current lifestyle she would need $26.45 an hour based on benefits costing her over 20% of her income. The staffing service offered her $20 per hour. Ann countered with $25, and they compromised with $22.55. Ann had to make some adjustments in her lifestyle. The staffing service did not offer any employee benefits to its temps, so Ann had to pay for them each month out of her own pocket.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Salary Survey
According to the most current information provided by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly earnings for American temporary professionals range up to $43.05 per hour, depending on field of work. Figure 3.2 lists some average hourly salary rates. These average salaries, for the most part, may have increased by a factor of 4% to 7% since the Bureau of Labor Statistics completed their last study.
Notice then that a professional, executive, or administrative temp who registers with a staffing service and works half a year (1040 hours) on a placement could earn anywhere from $11,000 to $45,000 for only six months' work. For a new entrant to the professional or technical labor force seeking experience and employment, or for someone like Ann who needs to support herself after a corporate downsizing, temping with a staffing service provides an income base plus flexibility and work experience.
