“There’s never been a better time to be a project manager.”
..states PMI Salary Survey —Eleventh Edition (2020).
But what the report truly indicates is that,
“there’s never been a better time to be a PMP® certified project manager.“
PMI regularly runs a salary survey to find out what kind of salary do project managers draw across industries, across geographies. This is probably one of the most comprehensive salary surveys conducted for any job type.
Some of the data you will discover might surprise you.
In this PMI salary survey article you will find –
- What data is collected?
- The top-3!
- Interactive salary tool
- What’s the verdict?
- PMI member benefits
- What does all this mean for me?
- The good news (& a PMP® prep blueprint)!
The 11th edition of PMI salary survey compares earnings of over 32,000 project managers from 42 countries. This time around 82% of the survey respondents held PMP® certification.
What is interesting to know is that 72% of them reported that their compensation increased in the past 12 months before taking the survey salary, and the report also shows the expected increase in next 12 months.
The respondents numbers from US, UK, Australia, India, and Canada decreased marginally compared to last year’s Salary Survey, while almost all remaining countries’ number increased. This means more homogeneous distribution across countries giving better picture.
Few countries (Russian Federation, Indonesia etc) took part for the first time.
What data is collected?
You can imagine the scale of PMI salary survey – over 32,000+ project managers across industries and verticals, across the globe. The sample size should be a good representative of the population (remember ‘random sampling’ from tool/technique of Control Quality process?) in order to provide realistic representation of salary figures.
Quite a wide variety of information is collected by PMI’s team – position, years of PM experience, highest formal education, degree in project management, PMP® status, training per year, type of project, avg team size, project budget, and many more – from the sample size from each of the 42 countries.
The Earning Power: Project Management Salary Survey—Eleventh Edition (2020) report is of about 360 pages long, with quite a detailed information segregated by countries.
Thus one can slice and dice the figures to extract an amazing amount of insights into how project management in general and PMP certification in particular can impact the salary of employees across industries, verticals, positions, and geographies.
Also read: Richard shows how to get certified when you don’t find time!
The top-3!
The top 3 countries on median salary figures were –
- Switzerland ($132,086)
- United States ($116,000)
- Australia ($101,381)
The top 3 countries with highest salary for PMP certification holders versus non-PMP®s were –
- Philippines (PMP®s earn 84% more than non-PMP®s)
- Indonesia (PMP®s earn 80% more than non-PMP®s)
- South Africa & Columbia (PMP®s earn 42% more than non-PMP®s)
The survey took the annualized salary (in USD) numbers based on various bucket-parameters such as –
- Country of employment
- Experience in terms of years of project management experience
- Position (designation)
- Project size (number of team members, and project budget)
Interactive salary tool
A quick and interesting way of getting a sense of how the PM salary varies across countries is through an interactive map PMI has provided.
Click on the image below to see this yourself (opens in a new window, then hover the mouse over any country to know the rank and annual median salary in USD) –
Image: Click to open the interactive salary map (courtesy: pmi.org)
What is the verdict?
This is the most important part of the findings, right?
The verdict, although in it’s most generic way (considering various factors considered during the survey) is that –
Respondents with PMP® certification report 22% higher median salaries than those without PMP® certification!
Also read: How Master Sergeant Matt Durbin prepared and aced his PMP exam.
PMI member benefits
Becoming PMI member is one of the best decisions one can make. There are host of benefits, including –
- free access to latest version of PMBOK,
- access to free content that can provide you PDUs necessary for continuing PMP® certification
- tons of premium project management education content
- StandardsPlusTM access to search for ANY information related to PMI standards that you can implement at work
- access to PMI monthly publications
- and of course the customized query of salary data
The last part, customized query to salary data that is available to PMI members provides information on the following parameters – country, position, industry, company size (annual revenue), province, PMP® status, and option to exclude ‘self-employed’ status.
This is of course given to you free of cost.
Image: PMI salary data available free of cost to PMP® members (courtesy: pmi.org)
What does all this mean for me?
Well, in a simplified sense this means is that if you are not already PMP® certified, you could be leaving 22% of your salary on the table right now.
What does about 20% of your annual salary for you? Whatever your CTC is (cost to the company) currently remove the last zero and double the amount – that’s how much you are losing now by NOT being PMP certified.
If that does not make you to want to get PMP® certified, know that in July the PMP® exam gets 40% more syllabus, and about 3 more types of questions (in addition to MCQ) added – making it one of the hardest (as if it is not already) exams to crack.
The good news & a PMP® prep blueprint!
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
– Chinese proverb
If you are worried about not being prepared for PMP® (especially in view of the new exam in July), you have good news.
Even if you have NOT started preparing for PMP®, you can get started now and within next 8-10 weeks you can walk out with PMP® certification in hand.
Based on years of PMP® coaching experience, here is a 4-part blueprint to your PMP® exam success in the shortest possible time frame with most confidence.
Part 1: Identify your learning style and choose study resources accordingly – limiting them to top 3 only.
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- Keep PMBOK as the third one (as many as 80% questions may appear from PMBOK)
- Choose the remaining 2 study resources on the basis of just one criteria – you must enjoy learning from them!
Part 2: Create a study plan that is based on study strategies and techniques that top performers have adopted (discover over 200 PMP®s’ exam experience here).
Part 3: Get someone or a close-knit study group that will guide you consistently.
Part 4:Study every single day – for PMP® success, study momentum is the most crucial aspect.
If you need more information, reach out to me on LinkedIn or even on Skype (my id is shivshanker.shenoy) and ask away!
Don’t worry about how to get PMP® certified.
There is still time to start now and pass your exam before new format kicks in.
Grab this opportunity to leverage the PMP® secrets today!
The brain-friendly & end-to-end PMP® prep program trusted by exam toppers. This brain-friendly program also helps you with PMI application, your own study plan, and 1-1 support till you pass the exam.
