Product Managers' Earnings Are on the Rise

Pragmatic Marketing just released the results of its annual survey of product and marketing professionals. For anyone in that field the news is encouraging. According to Pragmatic's findings, despite the current economic climate these executives are enjoying an increase in both earnings and responsibility.

According to Pragmatic's numbers, product managers' compensation increased an average of 5.5 percent during 2002. In examining compensation the company looked at both base salary and all bonuses earned by the various marketing professionals. The company's information indicates that the average compensation was $88,496 in salary, and $8,102 in annual bonuses. Digging deeper into the survey, the company breaks the compensation down by gender, finding that the average male product manager's salary was $90,685 with an annual bonus of $8,418, while female managers earned an average package of $84,663 in salary with a bonus of $7,548.

Pragmatic conducts the survey annually by sending questionnaires to 5,000 marketing professionals. The 2002 survey compromises information taken from the 981 respondents.

In addition to questioning product mangers about their earnings, the survey asked about various levels of ability and responsibility. The survey found that the average number of managers who go on sales calls rose from 37 percent in 2001 to 47 percent in 2002. Some of the major responsibilities listed by respondents included researching market needs (69 percent), preparing a business case (55 percent), and monitoring development projects (86 percent).

Additionally the survey reveals that 92 percent of product managers have finished college, but only 51 percent have taken some MBA classes and 40 percent have completed a masters program.