But even that puny increase occurred only because there's a striking data point that will really get the goat of the average engineer. As staff salaries stayed flat, managers netted pretty substantial raises. For staff engineers, paychecks actually got smaller than they were a year ago, dropping about a percentage point ,to an even $80,000, from $80,800 in 2000. That's the first decline in wages since 1989.

Things were much better for the managers who responded to EE Times' "2001 Worldwide Salary & Opinion Survey." They cracked through the $100,000 barrier for the first time, earning $102,700. That was a solid jump over the managerial salary of $96,600 last year, about a 6 percent increase.

The result is a $22,700 gap between staff engineers and managers. The gap widens to more than $25,000 when all forms of compensation are combined. Total compensation was $109,600 for managers and $84,200 for engineering staff. Viewed on a percentage basis, managers have base salaries that are about 28 percent higher than those of staffers. In terms of total compensation, managers make about 30 percent more than staff engineers.

Managers and staff engineers have fairly close to the same satisfaction level, with 57 percent of staff and 60 percent of managers describing compensation as adequate.

With stock prices down and salaries flat for the most part, engineers have a lot to say about what caused this year's slump and how it's going to affect them. Their comments were made during the summer, but we believe they still hold true, even after the recent terrorist attacks in the United States.

Other respondents were less optimistic. One well-paid engineer trapped between rising prices and stagnant wages viewed the economy in a pretty bad light.

"Abominable. But a lot of flaky companies must die.

"I want Silicon Valley traffic and real estate to come down by an order of magnitude, or else I need to leave. I cannot afford to live here with the money I make and California taxes," said this computer designer.

Another view came from a thirtysomething programmer in Las Vegas. "It's a chance to invest. The longer the bad economy lasts, the better to build your capital investments."

Bonuses flat
Meanwhile, it wasn't just salaries that were mostly flat. Exactly the same percentage of respondents, 62 percent, got bonuses this year as last. But the amount of the payout in 2001 was flat enough to examine with a carpenter's level, rising just one percentage point, from $6,230 in 2000 to $6,300 this year.

As bonuses and salaries inched up, at least it still represented an uptick. When readers added up their total compensation, they saw a decline of $440, the first downturn in more than a decade. With wages and bonuses rising ever so slightly, this decrease can probably be attributed to the dramatic slump in the value of stock options held by 55 percent of our respondents.

Looking back
To find numbers as gloomy as this lackluster set of figures, you'd have to go all the way back to 1989. In that year, coincidentally the first year for the first president George Bush, the mean salary for engineers actually fell $100. Happily, salaries rose a respectable $3,200 in 1990, to $52,700, and in 1991 they climbed another $400.

But after that, the decade was good to engineers, who enjoyed annual raises ranging from $1,400 to $4,600. Many engineers think that the current downturn is little more than an expected blip after the lengthy bull run.

Even though tech stocks have taken a beating this year, engineers believe that shares of their company are going to be worth more in the future. A full 69 percent said that stock options remain an effective tool for attracting engineers to a company or keeping employees from jumping ship. That was true among all age groups, job titles and in most industries. The exceptions were military/aerospace, where only 58 percent thought options were still effective, and in automotive/consumer electronics, where 63 percent put high value on options.

Asked if options are still good for attracting new employees and keeping current ones, one respondent said yes, but added a lengthy disclaimer.

"If the value of the option is so high that market fluctuations make them less than the option price, then they are worthless. Options need to be on the order of a buck," this North Carolina communications engineer wrote.

In Japan, only 4.7 percent of the respondents make more than $100,000. A third make less than $50,000, and another third make between $50,000 and $70,000. That leaves a bit more than 25 percent of engineers with a base salary ranging from $70,000 to $100,000.

Elsewhere in Asia, salaries remain substantially below U.S. levels. Wages in Hong Kong are the highest outside of Japan, averaging $39,600, according to a survey by our sister publication EE Times Asia. That's almost double the mean wage in Taiwan, $22,700. In South Korea, the typical wage drops to $20,500. In China, engineers earn a meager $7,000, while those in the rest of Asia earn $16,600.

At present, English engineers seem to be faring better than those in many other regions. They got raises of 4.3 percent this year, rising to $52,800. That's fractionally better than the English EEs got a year ago, when salaries rose 4 percent. However, observers note that downturns in Europe sometimes lag those in the United States by around nine months, so those numbers could be significantly different next year.

Whether most would consider that a good thing, given the loss of value during 2001, only 17 percent of the U.S. respondents don't have some form of stock or mutual-fund portfolio. Of those who hold these types of equities, the spring and summer weren't kind. A full 86 percent saw a decrease in the value of their stock investments, and 6 percent said their portfolios were flat.

That left a meager 8 percent claiming a profit. Ironically, those who claimed their stocks went up had the lowest salaries, at $74,600-some $12,600 less than those whose portfolios dropped in value. Even before terrorist attacks rocked the stock market, one engineer was lamenting his decision to buy and hold stocks, realizing in hindsight he should have dumped them a few months before.

Although stock values are declining, the slump in share prices hadn't disrupted the lifestyles of most of those who responded during the summer. A full 59 percent said the dip in their portfolio value had not impacted the way they live. For the rest, a quarter said their retirement plans had been altered, while 15 percent said they had postponed the purchase of big-ticket items.

The hardest hit were respondents over 50, who said their retirement plans had been changed. In that age group, a big 44 percent had revised their plans. Even in the 35-49 age group, 26 percent of respondents had adjusted their lifestyle plans.

For those under 35, the biggest effect was to postpone major purchases. Some 21 percent of the younger set changed plans for big-ticket items. There's also evidence that this age bracket is heeding the advice of financial analysts who suggest putting money into stocks and leaving it there.

The youngest group in our analysis was the largest group to say that their lifestyles hadn't been affected, with 66 percent saying the stock slump made no difference in their plans. That compares with 47 percent of the over-50 crowd.

In this survey more than in others in recent history, salaries jumped around a lot. For years, most wages have gone upward steadily, regardless of the region where the respondents lived and the industries in which they worked. But in this year's reader poll, some regions and fields saw declines, while others continued a steady rise.

Regionally, the south central United States saw a nice rise in salaries. Somehow, that message seems to have been picked up by students who responded to our college survey, also detailed in this issue. College students said that if they had their druthers, the South was the most-desirable place to work.

The sharp jumps were particularly evident in Texas, where wages rose from $74,500 to $87,700. In Georgia, which has made a big push to attract technology companies, base salaries went from $86,700 to $93,700. Underscoring the wild fluctuations seen in some regions, North Carolina's mean salary dropped from $83,000 to $75,300.

As usual, pay on the West Coast was higher than elsewhere in the United States. Base salaries in both California and Oregon are $97,000, up from 2000 figures of $94,900 and $81,100, respectively. However, they dipped sharply in Colorado, partly because our respondents in that state were noticeably younger this year. Colorado readers earned $75,200 this year, markedly less than last year's $85,200.

As always, our respondents were overwhelmingly males, most of them white. The 96 percent male workers made $83,500, well above the $70,700 earned by the women, though the low number of females responding throws the credibility of the gender gap into question.

Ethnically, 80 percent were whites born in the United States. They earned $82,500. The second-largest ethnic group, engineers with Chinese heritage, made up 7 percent of our sample and had the highest salary, $89,500. Indians were next in both numbers and wages, with a salary of $87,700 for this 4 percent of our respondents. African-Americans and Hispanics made up a meager 2 percent of our readership.

Their wages varied widely, with blacks earning $86,200 and Hispanics making $80,700-though again, the small sample size means the reliability level for those figures is lower than for the larger groups.

The percentage of respondents who earn more than $100,000 inched up to 23 percent. Though the increase in the number of people cracking that barrier was below the jumps we've seen in past years, it's not too shabby. That nearly a quarter of you make that lofty wage is particularly impressive considering that even though inflation was fairly low during most of the 1990s, a scant 3.3 percent of our survey respondents earned $100,000 in 1992.

Managers definitely lead the charge into the six-digit income bracket, with 53 percent earning more than $100,000. Substantially fewer staff engineers, 18 percent, make six figures. In a year when flat is the operative word, it should be no surprise that last year too, 18 percent of the staff engineers earned more than $100,000.

In overall compensation, it paid to work for a large company this year. The total wage package was solidly above $90,000 for workers at corporations with revenue greater than $500 million. At companies with less than $100 million, total pay was below $80,000, except for at the smallest organizations. Companies with revenue of less than $10 million had to offer a bit more, $85,000.

Additional charts:
Salaries flatten out: Smallest raise in more than a decade
Mean salaries by region: Metro area salaries changed daily
Who gets what: Managers, middle-aged fared well
Ups and downs: Upward climb slowed for some