Pay for project management roles
Adapting to change is an important organisational attribute. Employing staff to manage projects that enable a business to plan and implement change can be key to its success. And making sure that project managers are paid in line with market benchmarks is vital for recruitment, retention and motivation of such staff. Our latest research found that the median basic salary for project managers in 2023 is £46,780, with those specialising in IT typically earning more: the median here is £49,213 (representing a 5.2% premium). Some projects require specialist management or developed experience to deliver multiple and/or high-profile projects with significant budgets. Our research shows that the median salary for these senior project manager positions is £62,038.
Many organisations employ project staff at a senior management level to oversee multiple projects or major service/organisational change. The most common job title here is ‘programme manager’. Our analysis shows that basic pay for these roles is £81,640 at the median – and can be higher still if the organisation’s role sits at director level where salaries can exceed £100,000 per year. At the other end of the distribution, more junior-level employees in support roles, such as project officers or co-ordinators, typically earn £28,186 where the work requires detailed experience. Our research shows that some of these workers perform a supervisory or specialist support function required for the delivery of a project, such as IT or civil engineering or to oversee the administration of tasks, and the median for such roles is £36,204.
Our analysis is based on a survey of pay and benefits for roles in project management, alongside existing data from IDR’s online salary database Pay_Benchmarker. The survey was conducted in April and May 2023 and received responses from 38 mostly larger organisations across the economy, together employing over 500,000 staff.
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