Guiding your way to the Salary Guide!

It’s time to reveal one of the Bureau’s most illuminating annual projects -- our salary guide! As always, we partnered with Promethean Research to figure out how the compensation situation is trending digital service companies, with data from over a thousand individuals. Prepare your mind for some knowledge, because it’s coming in hot!

Check out the 2024 Salary Guide

It’s time to check in again on pay at digital agencies, courtesy of our 2024 compensation guide. Things have changed a ton since the beginning of the pandemic, and there are some interesting areas to watch as far as how different shops are spending their money on talent. Let’s dive in!

Of course we’ll start by looking at the overall salary numbers and how they are trending. During the pandemic compensation was going up quickly, but that’s been cooling off now. Most areas are still seeing overall growth, just not as fast. We’re seeing the most salary increases in the areas of operations and development, which have still grown by double digits over the last couple of years. On the other hand, sales and account management have stalled out to a large degree. Dialing in on 2023 raises specifically, that trend holds true, with most people in the design/dev space getting some kind of raise, while less than half of business development professionals and account managers saw an increase last year.

Looking at turnover, the trends there have shifted a lot since 2021. At that time, most terminations were voluntary as people looked to fill the needs in a job seeker’s market. And while overall turnover numbers are holding fairly steady over the past three years, the nature of those separations has changed as most of those terminations are now involuntary. This was likely a natural result of unusually high numbers for hiring in the middle of covid, and the work is slowing down now.

Probably the biggest change recorded in the report has been in the absolute explosion of remote work among agencies. A staggeringly small 3% of workers are now in the office full time, which would have been unthinkable just five years ago. Even hybrid arrangements are in the minority, with 30% taking this route, in contrast to a full two-thirds who are fully remote. There’s no going back, and it’s literally paying off as those remote employees bring more experience to their agencies and demand higher pay for their skill sets.

This is just a taste of what the full Digital Services Salary Guide 2024 has to offer. Want to see the detailed numbers on specific jobs and how they are paying? What about owner compensation? Take a look at all the numbers and see how you measure up, and where you might want to make some changes to stay competitive. Members should have already received the report. Everyone else can get a copy here: Digital Services Salary Guide 2024

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