What other people make

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa--On Sept. 15, the National Systems Contractors Association, representing 2,500 members of the commercial electronic systems industry, released its biannual compensation and benefits report, which can be accessed by corporate members. Compiled by senior director of member services Jodi Montgomery, the report is the result of surveys sent to 2,893 systems contractors and integrators in North America, with 130 companies in 36 states anonymously completing surveys. Results include information on company background, staffing, certification, employment benefits and compensation, with numbers broken out into job types, including two job types added this year: IT/network engineer and programmer. As a sample of the type of information included, 10 percent of the companies reported revenues under $637,000, while 10 percent reported revenues over $18 million; 10 percent of owners reported annual income under $46,190, while 10 percent reported income over $300,000; paid vacation is offered by 83 percent of companies. "Unfortunately," said Montgomery, "this particular report does not focus on the technologies that the companies are involved in ... [and] ... job titles that are listed are not specifically tied to security but rather are a bit more generic to the industry in general," so it's unclear how salaries and revenues stack up specifically for security systems integrators. However, according to a winter 2007 NSCA Market Intelligence Briefing, 43 percent of NSCA members install fire, security or CCTV systems. For more information on the survey, visit www.nsca.org.