Report: Logistics salaries stabilizing

OAK BROOK, Ill. — The Warehousing Education and Research Council says the average employee turnover among all warehouses surveyed in the 2010 edition of its Warehousing Salaries & Wages Report was less 19.6 percent – a decrease of 4.1 percent since the 2008 report.

The report was released yesterday and is available as a downloadable PDF from the WERC web site (free to WERC members, a cost of $150 to non-members).

According to WERC, there were some interesting findings in this year’s report. In particular, the exempt warehouse positions earning the highest median total compensation (base salary plus bonus) are the vice president of logistics, vice president of marketing/sales, and director of logistics.

The non-exempt warehouse employees earning the highest median hourly wages are customer service representative and Forklift operator. Shipping/receiving clerk was in the second spot.

"The good news is that the 2010 change in all non-exempt median hourly wages was positive, which mirrors the results of the prior survey," a release from WERC states. "The sales person did not get good news, in that the median total compensation continues to fall with a substantial decrease this year of -31.6% (the same position dropped -7.7% 08 vs. 06)."

WERC says report findings are broken down by size of operation, geographic location, and type of business, and are presented in a way that allows users to easily find data that most closely reflects their own warehouses. Compensation levels among exempt employees are broken out by the number of years served in their current position and by number of employees supervised.