I have been a lot of inquiries for wage data lately and it made me think I should share some sources! My department works from a zero budget perspective - meaning that I work hard to uncover and use no-cost resources whenever possible. It's easy enough to google paid resources because they are usually well advertised and corresponding websites are optimized to appear high in search engine results. However, nonprofit and government websites aren't always as sleek and chic with the SEO.

Drum roll please as I pull wage data out of my sleeve...

The State of Pennsylvania has data information by occupation on a State, County, Metropolitan statistical area and Workforce Investment area. You can download it in a .pdf file or spreadsheet from their site and slice and dice it to your heart's content. Occupations are listed by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). I called the data center and asked a lot of questions about the data collection in order to provide you the best information possible.

The information is obtained via surveys sent to every employer across the state. Employers send in the wage data and analysts create the report. It is published once a year and posted to the website for users. The most recent report is dated May 2010 - but the report is always dated the year the survey was sent out. It takes almost a year to prompt and prod employers to respond and then for analysts to do magic number crunching. The current report was posted in June of this year. It is as fresh as it gets!

Get your PA State wage data by occupation by clicking here. 

Glassdoor.com is a free career community where anyone can find and anonymously share an inside look at jobs and companies. What sets them apart is that their information comes from current and former employees, interview candidates, and even the companies themselves. They have more than a million salaries, company reviews, interview questions, office photos, and more, to give you all the competitive intelligence you'll need to ensure your company is equally competitive in the compensation department.

Payscale.com owns the largest database of online employee salary data in the world and you can gain very valuable information without a premium subscription (aka using the free version). PayScale's data set starts with surveys run by third parties including the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics and U.S. Census Department. Real-time data is then added from all members that enter information directly into the system via the web site daily

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the National Compensation Survey with boat loads of information to keep you up into the wee hours of the morning. You can slice, dice and parcel wages for the entire nation with this one!

I used to keep a spreadsheet, calling 30+ customer service centric companies in the greater Wilkes-Barre area to glean this same type of info. It was an arduous and frankly painful task. The truth is, when I would parse, spin and average the numbers it would come out within rounded figures that are so easily obtainable through these sources....

Every day access to data is freer, easier to obtain and more readily at our fingertips..

What do you say, ready give up on making those horrid calls and sourcing your wage data with these reliable easy to use resources?