The Compensation Planning Survey
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 five (505) leading organizations participated in the 2026-2027 Compensation Planning Survey, which was published in October 2026. 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 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 (%)
- % Firms Who Are Planning a 2027 Compensation Increase
- 2027 General Increase/Cost of Living (COLA) (%)
- 2027 Merit Increase (%)
- 2027 Other Increase (%)
- 2027 Total Increase (%)
- 2027 Salary Structure Adjustment (%)
- 2027 Promotional Increase Budget (%)
- Bonus Plan Eligibility
- Bonus Plan - Awards Received
- Global Salary Budget Data
