The PayScale Index (US): Trends in Compensation

2012: A lot of real estate is worth less these days and people working in this industry have the wages to prove it. A quarterly increase of 0.3 percent in wages for real estate workers in Q1 2012 barely made up for the ground lost in 2011. Furthermore, year-over-year growth of 0.5 percent for this industry placed them just ahead of the worst-performing industry in The PayScale Index – food services and accommodation.

2007-2011: The difficulties faced by professionals in the real estate industry, which includes both real estate management (e.g. apartment management) and housing and commercial real estate sales, have been well publicized in recent years. The collapse of the housing market had a large impact on residential real estate activity.

Wages in real estate rose in 2007 and 2008, though they remained behind national averages. Then real estate earnings suffered an early decline in Q3 2008, continued to drop through 2010, with only a slight uptick at the end of that year. That gain, plus more, was lost in 2011.

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The real estate services industry (53), as defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), includes the following: property managers, real estate agents and brokers, car rental agencies, home leasing, equipment rental, commercial property lending. View the full definition on Census.gov.

The PayScale Index tracks quarterly changes in total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees in the United States. In addition to a national index, it includes separate indices for specific industries, metropolitan areas, job categories, and company sizes. The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

See full methodology for compensation trend reports.

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