The Compensation Planning Survey

Provides data on compensation increases, budgets, salary structure adjustments, and promotion budgets for a variety of industries. Learn more about this complimentary survey to help you plan for the upcoming compensation cycle.
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About the Survey

The Compensation Planning Survey includes the latest information on compensation increase budgets, salary structure adjustments, promotion budgets, and more. The survey is free to participants and all participants are eligible to run unlimited custom analyses of the data free of charge. The online custom report feature allows you to select the organizations of most interest to your firm to receive a custom report displaying the survey totals as compared to your peer group and your organization.

Five hundred and sixty-three (563) leading organizations participated in the 2025-2026 Compensation Planning Survey, which was published in October 2025. Many of the data points included in the survey results are broken out by the following employee groups: Non-Exempt, Exempt, Management, and Executive.

Compensation components included:

  • % Firms Who Implemented a 2025 Compensation Increase
  • 2025 General Increase/Cost of Living (COLA) (%)
  • 2025 Merit Increase (%)
  • 2025 Other Increase (%)
  • 2025 Total Increase (%)
  • 2025 Salary Structure Adjustment (%)
  • 2025 Promotional Increase Budget (%)
  • % Firms Who Are Planning a 2026 Compensation Increase
  • 2026 General Increase/Cost of Living (COLA) (%)
  • 2026 Merit Increase (%)
  • 2026 Other Increase (%)
  • 2026 Total Increase (%)
  • 2026 Salary Structure Adjustment (%)
  • 2026 Promotional Increase Budget (%)
  • Bonus Plan Eligibility
  • Bonus Plan - Awards Received
  • Global Salary Budget Data
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