Looking Ahead to Executive Pay Projections in 2025

Pearl Meyer’s “Looking Ahead to Executive Pay Practices” is an annual, online survey and valuable compensation planning tool. This year, it has been separated into two surveys, with the first “Practices/Design” focused primarily on compensation philosophy and plan design, and the second “Pay Projections”  focused on 2024 year-end and 2025 pay projections. Findings for the “Practices/Design” survey were published in September 2024 and summary results can be accessed here. Analysis and summary findings for the “Pay Projections” survey are covered in this document.

This year’s pay projections survey was conducted in October of 2024, with total participation from 219 companies, including 110 publicly traded, 83 private for-profit, and 26 not-for-profit (NFP) organizations. As with prior surveys, responses are broken out separately by respondent role (board member vs. employee), ownership type, industry, and company size. 

The pay projections survey addresses anticipated financial performance outcomes for 2024, projected award funding outcomes for short-term incentive (STI) and long-term incentive (LTI) cycles ending in 2024, anticipated use of discretion, and 2025 projections for base salary increases and LTI grant values.