Even as salary increases hit record lows in the United States in 2003, Asia saw an overall salary increase with India reporting the highest average pay rise.
This was indicated on Tuesday in the annual salary survey conducted by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources outsourcing and consulting firm.
Hewitt said that India led the rise in salaries in 2003 in Asia, followed by the Philippines, South Korea, and China.
Software industry professionals in India received the highest average salary increase at 14 per cent, like in the last year. However, this was 10 percent lower than the Indian IT industry's average salary increase in 2002.
Employees in the Philippines received salary increases between 7.1 per cent and 8.6 per cent across various job categories. Last year, the average rise in the Philippines ranged from 6.4 per cent to 10 per cent.
In China, employees continued to enjoy average salary increases ranging from 6.7 per cent to 7.3 per cent, but senior management employees got lower increases. Last year, China saw salary increases of 6.5 per cent to 8.7 per cent.
Salary increases in Hong Kong and Singapore were low. In Singapore, the average overall salary increase for 2003 was between 2.1 per cent and 2.4 per cent, while in Hong Kong it ranged from 1.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent.
Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia saw average salary increases of 3 per cent to 5 per cent this year.
Hewitt surveyed 991 foreign, locally owned and joint-venture companies between July and September 2003 in 11 Asian markets: India, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.
Hewitt said that projections for 2004 indicate pay rises would remain marginal, though fewer companies are expecting pay freezes. Respondents in all countries projected that the salary increases in 2004 would only be about 1 per cent higher than in 2003.
"Although employees in countries with faster growing economies still saw reasonable pay rises, the increases are only slightly higher than those of the previous year," said Mick Bennett, Hewitt's regional managing director.
"Employers are still cautious over the slow pace of the economic recovery, and the outbreak of SARS earlier in the year may have had some impact on salary increases because there are fears the virus will return as the weather gets colder," he said.
US salaries drop
However, in the United States salary increases hit record lows in 2003, as variable pay spending dropped off for the first time since gaining popularity in the 1990s.
Hewitt, a global human resources outsourcing and consulting firm, surveyed companies nationwide, and found that average salary increases for 2003 were 3.4 per cent for salaried exempt employees, 3.3 per cent for salaried nonexempt employees, 3.3 per cent for nonunion hourly workers and 3.5 per cent for executives.
These 2003 averages were the lowest salary increases ever recorded in Hewitt's 27 years of gathering and analysing this type of data.
Salary increase projections for 2004 are slightly higher than the 2003 numbers, with estimates of 3.6 per cent for salaried exempt employees, 3.5 per cent for salaried nonexempt employees, 3.5 per cent for nonunion hourly workers and 3.7 per cent for executives.
While increases are projected to be somewhat higher next year, they are down from the recent high-level mark of 2001, when base salary increases were 4.3 per cent for salaried exempt employees, 4.2 per cent for salaried nonexempt employees, 4.0 per cent for nonunion hourly workers and 4.5 per cent for executives.
Meanwhile, 8 per cent of organisations in this Hewitt study reported a salary freeze in 2003, but only 2 per cent expect to take this type of action in 2004.