Salary Survey

March 2017

Thanks to the 139 TechCommNZ members and non-members who took the opportunity to complete the TechCommNZ Annual Salary Survey. Steve Moss, former TechCommNZ President, has kindly collated the raw data for us. The full survey is only available to TechCommNZ members, who need to log in to the site to access the Member Area and Survey.

Here are a few of the survey findings:

  • Good news for team players; only 14.5% of salaried respondents are the sole technical communicator in their organisation (down from 18% in 2015, and 20% in 2014).
  • 32% of respondents have not had a pay rise in the last 12 months.
  • However, of those in a salaried job, 45.3% are earning between $70,000 and $90,000 annually, and only 19.6% less than $70,000 annually.
  • The majority of salaried employees are working 40 or more hours per week (64.9% down from 74% in 2015).
  • The total number of respondents using any version of Microsoft Office appears to be trending down (119 in this survey, 186 in 2015 and 216 in 2014).
  • Delivery to mobile devices remains important, with 58.6% saying it is very/somewhat important (59% in 2015, 52% in 2014). Web-based delivery continues to be important to nearly all 88.2% (86.3% in 2015) and cloud-based delivery is important to 52.5% (44.4% in 2015).

Widening the field of technical communication

This year, we asked “in what industry are technical communicators working?” The field of technical communication is ever expanding, with technical communicators now employed in manufacturing, health care and social assistance, education, visual effects, rural services, and many more industries. Likewise, technical communicators are coming to the industry from a multitude of backgrounds. This year’s survey revealed that our technical communicators hold over 90 different qualifications between them, including everything from Strategic Management to Philosophy, Zoology to Engineering, History to Journalism, and more.

Read the full results

The full survey includes salary and hourly rate ranges and other interesting statistics. Members can view it in the Member Area TechCommNZ Surveys Salary Survey section of our site. You'll need to log in first.

Katie Haggath