If you're one of those people that likes envisioning their career path several years in advance in order to make a bunch of elaborate plans that will likely be thrown off course by one or more life events/bad decisions, Robert Half's annual salary guide will prove quite useful. It has plenty of data, probably more than any one person needs, but unlike your parents, Bob Half doesn't have a favorite. He thinks you're all special, so anyone can quantify any perceivable dream career path you might want.
When you cruise through the guide, it becomes clear that our nation's unemployment problem could be easily solved if everyone trudged through a few college accounting and finance courses. In the "Corporate Accounting" section there are 30 different titles to choose from, everything from CFO to Forensic Accountant, and all the salaries are pretty respectable.
Anyway, the Journal of Accountancy post that we linked to this morning states that corporate accounting and finance types, on average, will have a slightly better salaries in 2013 than those in public accounting. Taking a quick glance over the numbers, you'll see that controllers of various stripes are on the higher end of the range (2.7% – 4.5%).
In the "Public Accounting" section, it's a resounding, MEH, as none of the positions listed in tax, assurance or management services really stand out.
"Financial services" requires its own section and the numbers there are equally devoid of anything interesting as everything seems to fall in the meaty party of the range.
So no news is really good news and everyone that juggles numbers on spreadsheets for a living can expect a slightly better salary in 2013 and for the foreseeable future. At least until the robots take your jobs.
