10 jobs with the biggest pay raises

[IronLionZion]

While many Americans got a tiny — or no — pay raise this past year, some lucky workers got pay bumps that were triple or more the national average.

Even as the job market improves — the government’s jobs report released Friday puts unemployment at just 4.7%, the lowest level since the month before the Great Recession began in December 2007 — workers aren’t getting big raises. For the past few years, the average pay raise has hovered at around 3%, and that won’t change much this year: “U.S. employees can expect an average base salary increase of 3.1% in 2016, up only slightly, if at all, from the raises they received this year,” according to the Society of Human Resource Management.

But there were some jobs where raises were much higher, according to a report released in April by staffing and HR services firm Randstad US. The report examined salary and other data from roughly 565,000 organizations from compensation research firm Economic Research Institute, as well as its own proprietary data.

Here are the 10 positions that saw the largest pay raises in the past year. (Note: Raises are rounded.)

1. Electromechanical technician: 9.3%

2. Electronics/computer engineer: 8.3%

3. Assistant plant manager in the manufacturing/logistics field: 8%

4. Mechanical engineer: 7.4%

5. Quality engineer: 7.4%

6. Network engineer: 7.2%

7. Office manager: 6.7%

8. Maintenance manager in the manufacturing/logistics field: 6.7%

9. Software engineer: 5.5%

10. Call center representative: 4.6%

Electromechanical technicians — who do things like operate, test and maintain robots and other automated equipment — saw a more than 9% raise, the highest among the thousands of jobs examined. This may be thanks, in part, to the fact that the manufacturing sector is increasingly becoming automated — in 2015, orders and shipments for robots in North America jumped 14% and hit new records, according to the Robotic Industries Association, an industry trade group — upping the demand for workers who have these skills.

Many of the other jobs in the top 10 list were engineering jobs. This may be due to the fact that some engineering jobs are in high demand, including jobs like network engineer (thanks to a heightened focus on security) and software engineer (as more mobile apps are being created), and there are often not enough graduates to fill them at a time when boomers are leaving the workforce, says Dino Grigorakakis, the vice president of recruiting at Randstad Technologies.

These aren’t necessarily the jobs with the best growth potential. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that electromechanical technicians will experience a 1% increase in job growth from 2014 to 2024. And, of course, you aren’t guaranteed a raise by working in these fields, and may, in fact get a bigger bump by switching industries or jobs.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-jobs-with-the-biggest-pay-raises-2016-04-08

I find it very interesting that call centers are coming back to America and seeing pay raises. People do place a high value on customer service and do more over the phone instead of going to a store due to convenience.

And then there's robotics...