HELM organized a Design & Construction Industry Compensation Survey last year, and 50 companies from the Northeast responded. This survey was an update to a similar survey conducted in 2018. Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey and was willing to share this basic information about their business.

Our respondents were primarily companies from the Northeast region, with annual revenues ranging from $80,000/year to $19 million/year. A total of 440 employees were represented in the survey results, and we broke out the data from a range of typical positions in our industry. We do not claim to be a professional survey company and we recognize the limitations of such a small sample size.

Our goal was to help participating companies identify market trends and understand how the rapidly changing cost of living has affected wages and benefits.

The major change from 2018 to 2022 was an overall increase in hourly wages of 19%. The only position we tracked that showed a lower average wage in 2022 was Salesperson, which in both surveys was only represented by a small sample size.

Executive Summary

This survey was distributed to HELM Construction Solutions clients and colleagues in the fall of 2022. The results were compiled and summarized by HELM to provide data to participating companies on compensation trends in the design and construction industry, with the goal of focusing attention on the People portion of the People, Planet, Prosperity triple bottom line.

Survey Stats

50 companies responded
Revenue ranged from $80,000/yr to $15.75 million/yr
Team size ranged from 1 to 39
Total of 440 employees represented in the survey results

Respondents

Our respondents were primarily from the Northeast region, but we chose to report our data on each position both by state and by total company revenue. In some cases, the data set was too small to be statistically relevant, but we chose to include all the data we received.

Summary Data

HELM Compensation Survey 2022 - positions tracked

Challenges

One of the things we wanted to look at was the benefits offered by each company. However, due to the way the information was reported, and the low number of submissions on some benefit categories, we did not feel we had statistically significant data to report averages for the dollar value of specific benefits. Instead, you will see the number and percentage of companies offering each benefit.

Assumptions

For compensation expressed as a salary, we converted these to hourly wages based on a standard work year of 2080 hours (40 hrs/week x 52 weeks). We recognize this is not necessarily true for all workers but gave us the best way to compare compensation.

Next Steps

We hope to do this survey again in the future and continue to refine it to be useful to its participants. Please send any feedback on suggested changes to kath@buildhelm.com. We are curious to hear whether it is useful to you and how you choose to use it.

Survey Coordinators

Kate Stephenson, HELM Construction Solutions

Kath McCusker, HELM Construction Solutions

Compensation Survey Results Are In!