Pay expectation falls: survey

Press, 4 November 1986, Page 6

Pay expectation falls: survey

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington Management expectations of salary increases this year have dropped, according to a recent survey by Price Waterhouse; an international accountancy firm. The report, released to subscribers yesterday, predicts an average movement of between 8 and ID per cent in executive salaries for the September, 1986, to September, 1987, year. An analyst with Price Waterhouse, Mr Roger Dunn, said this represented a drop on earlier thinking and showed “most people (were) beginning to reconcile them-

selves to increases more related to the rate of inflation” — now estimated at about ID per cent Mr Dunn said .the firm’s March survey had shown that many employers were still thinking in terms of 15 per cent increases for their top staff. He attributed the drop from 15 per cent to between 8 and ID per cent to the initial skirmishing in the wage round and to the generally low’ pattern of settlement to toe lowering of inflation, and to the October tax cuts — cuts which have increased the take-home pay of senior executives on packages of more than $60,000 a year by as much as $2OO a week. ’