Mindy Hew, a legal assistant from Westminster, has seen her salary jump 8 to 10 percent over the past two years because of a new job and a rapid promotion.
“You have to look for a new job every two to three years in order to get that increase,” Hew said.
Allemreh Stoker, a banking employee from Aurora, has had raises totaling 11.5 percent in the past five years – but still lags what she was making before the recession of 2001.
“I was making more five years ago in telecommunications than I’m making today,” Stoker said. “I’m trying to get back to that level.”
These are some of the real people behind a Bureau of Economic Analysis report that shows that compensation in Colorado has risen by 21.8 percent over the past five years and increased by 7.4 percent last year.
The 2001 recession led to many job losses and relatively flat compensation growth in 2002 and 2003. Since then, the state has gained jobs in abundance – and compensation has begun to rise steadily.
Interviews with workers suggest, among other things, that finding a new job or having one with performance-based incentives can be the best way to ensure getting a raise.
Some of the biggest gains in compensation in recent years have been in the management and mining sectors, according to the BEA report. Mining, for example, has seen an 81.5 percent compensation increase in the past five years, the report said.
Steve Woodward, a Centennial resident who works in the oil- and-gas industry, said compensation increases in that sector are built mostly on incentives.
“Base wages have held fairly constant, but incentives are up. The oil-and-gas industry is doing better,” he said. “Companies are trying to get more employee participation in the bottom line.”
Hugo Rodrigues said he got less in the way of compensation increases working in a former job as a Sears salesman than indicated by the BEA’s reported 13.8 percent compensation increase for the the retail sector.
His switch to a credit-repair company netted him a salary boost of about 30 percent, which is higher than the bureau’s five-year number for that sector. Bonuses are tied to performance at Rodrigues’ company, which he said should bring him an extra $1,000 this year.
Susonia Ruvin said there are trade-offs between receiving a small, set cost-of-living increase annually and performance-based bonuses. The former state worker, who now works for a collections company, said she has had only a 6 percent increase in recent years.
“You get your own perks in a different way,” said the Denver resident. “If they do decide to give you a raise or bonus, it might be a bigger jump. When I worked with the state, the increase was something you could count on and factor into your budget.”
At real-estate firm Cushman Wakefield of Colorado Inc., wage increases are driven by brokerage revenue and commissions, which are split with the company, said executive managing director Sherm Miller. Company revenues were up 37 percent over the previous year.
“For brokers, there’s been a dramatic increase in compensation just because the market is so strong,” Miller said.
That’s consistent with the BEA report’s estimates, which pegged raises in the real-estate sector at 27 percent over the past five years.
Judy Barry, a specialty nurse for Kaiser Permanente’s advanced wound-care clinic in Denver, has seen her salary climb nearly 40 percent since she started working there five years ago, right in line with the reported 37.7 percent compensation increase in her field.
“I’m in a different venue now; I worked in home care before,” she said. “If I went and worked at a hospital, I’d probably make even more … because there’s a more acute need for nurses there.”
Staff writer Margaret Jackson contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
