Financial chiefs top pay league

Accountants have cemented their place at the top of New Zealand's income earners.

An annual survey by the recruiting firm Hays has found that finance directors of big companies with sales above $150 million a year earn $190,000 a year.

That's still well short of Prime Minister Helen Clark's $305,000 or newsreader Judy Bailey's $800,000.

But it puts the money managers comfortably ahead of the sales and marketing managers who sell the companies' products, whose average pay has dropped this year from $180,000 to $140,000.

Chief technology officers ($120,000), partners in law firms ($100,000-plus) and managers of construction projects ($90,000-$130,000) all come further back in the queue.

The survey is based on questionnaires sent to 1700 businesses in New Zealand and Australia, but covers only office jobs, construction and mining. It does not, for example, cover doctors at the top of the income scale or most lower-paid workers at the bottom.

In general, it found that salaries have been remarkably stable despite the super-heated economy, which grew by 4.8 per cent last year.

"Our survey clearly shows the scarcity of labour has yet to have a significant impact on salaries," said Hays' New Zealand manager, Jason Walker.

The survey found both ups and downs, apparently depending on which category people chose to classify themselves into.

The average salary for bank managers, for example, leapt from $55,000 last year to $75,000 this year in Auckland, compared with A$62,000 ($66,700) for both years in Sydney. Mr Walker said this reflected a change in their responsibilities.

Wide Area Network voice/communications engineers' salaries jumped from $55,000 to $65,000, partly because the increasing use of internet networks for voice phone calls has encouraged engineers who previously specialised in data to include voice.

Cisco engineer Jason Baty estimated that he was one of only about 150 people truly working in the field in New Zealand, and their higher pay reflected intense demand for their skills. "It wouldn't surprise me because it's a very technical job and you always have to keep on learning the new technologies coming along," he said.

Despite the slowing economies on both sides of the Tasman, the survey found that 61 per cent of employers intend to raise salaries in the coming year by 3 to 6 per cent.

"As employers increase their efforts to recruit staff, they will also increase their attempts to retain staff," Mr Walker said.

"We would not be surprised to see an increase in counter-offers in the next 12 months, despite the fact that the success of this strategy is rare."