Below you will discover the outcomes of the brewer compensation inspection I walk a few weeks ago. ~ removing part suspicious responses and those from exterior the us (sorry Canucks!), I finished up with 397 valid responses. As promised, ns dumped identifying information after verification and also before i started any data crunching. They are gone native the database, yet I wanted to cite that throughout the verification, i was heartened by the number of female surname I experienced flit by. We"re certainly seeing females entering this profession.
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I am an extremely pleased v this data set. There space a variety of ways to confirm that it"s both valid and also representative when you begin looking in ~ the numbers, and also at each of those points, the distribution looked as one would intend with a robust sample. This is only a sample and has the same margin the error any sample does; ns am satisfied the it"s relatively representative the the brewers in the US.
Again, I desire to thank all of you that took the moment to to fill this out. There is an significant wealth of info in the comments, and also I will perform a separate post looking in ~ those. They offer some feeling to the dried numbers that follow. Finally, after all the posts are done, I"ll translate in this right into a .pdf report because that anyone who"d choose to have it top top hand.
Demographics
The vast majority of breweries in the United claims are small, and responses reflected that. Seventy-five percent that respondents occupational in a brewery of 10,000 barrels or less. Just 6% work-related at a brewery making an ext than 100,000 barrels. Ns didn"t do a great job of gaining this survey right into the hand of people in the cellar or top top packaging lines, but the circulation otherwise was relatively typical.
I have no method of knowing how much endure the mean brewery worker has, however in my survey, respondent tilted toward experience. Three-quarters have much more than two years experience, and a 3rd have an ext than 5 years. I was also surprised to see that over a 3rd of respondents stated they had actually a level in unavoidable or associated field. We"ll see later in the report just how experience and also education impact salaries. Finally, I wanted to be able to see if owner/brewers treated themselves differently and so i asked even if it is respondents were owners or had an ownership stake.
Finally, there to be a an extremely nice regional distribution. Half this blog"s traffic comes from the Northwest, but the West Coast, Northeast, South, and Midwest every had similar representation. Just the hill West and Southwest to be sparse, and also I"ve fell down them here and throughout the report. Respondents likewise work in small, medium, and huge cities in around proportional terms (small and big town responses were practically identical). Again, we"ll see how that affects salaries below.
Salary Distributions
I created this survey so I could pull apart few of the determinants that might influence what a brewer earns: task position, experience, a unavoidable degree, the region of the country, size of the brewery, and size that the town in i beg your pardon a brewery is located. As I start to expose the findings of what brewers earn, keep in mental my post about what they must earn. A life wage--the bare minimum a single person demands to remain self-sufficient--is around $22,000 in a small town and around $28,000 in a huge city. (You can discover out how to evaluate a living wage at the post.) normally speaking, many brewers show up to it is in earning at least a life wage, though things are still ragged at the margins.
Only 15% room paid less than $25,000, and also these tended to be people working top top packaging present or the cellar--though in smaller breweries, it"s no that rare for a brewmaster or head brewer to it is in earning much less than $30,000. Several components both account because that and additionally mitigate short wages. To do it much easier for respondents, I readily available nine various salary categories rather than having them enter a figure. To gain the adhering to salary numbers, i recoded each salary level as the average; if the answer to be $35,000-$39,999, it to be recoded as $37,500. Listed below is a graph with the averages by position.
Size of BreweryThere is a quirk in the data the we"ll watch going forward. In larger breweries through multiple brewers, the brewmaster/head of impending operations is the most highly-paid brewer. However there room many small breweries in the sample where the brewmaster might be the only brewer. As a result, small-brewer brewmasters regularly make less than head brewers, command brewers, or even shift brewers at bigger companies. This is reflect in the graph in ~ right, which reflects the average across all salaries offered in breweries of different sizes. (The sample displayed has to be weighted--see explanation below.)
The following table is going to be difficult to check out on phones, but it shows how size affect what wages brewers are likely to make. (The incomes jump approximately a bit, and this is because of the short numbers; some of the cell here have just a few salaries and outliers deserve to throw the median off.) In this chart, you have the right to see just how size affects salary; because that example, the median brewmaster at the the smallest brewery makes less than the typical lead brewer in ~ a 35,000-barrel brewery. Within the exact same size category, though, there is a predictable descending bespeak of revenue from the brewmaster ~ above down.
Region, dimension of Community, and also OwnershipI want to see how other components might affect what people earn, therefore I had actually questions about the size of the community and an ar of the country in which the brewery was located. Ns was also interested to see what impact having an property stake in the brewery would have. Would certainly owner/brewers pay themselves in different way than brewers who worked for them? as you have the right to see, brewers gain paid an ext in big cities--though there"s no difference between tiny towns and also mid-sized cities. There"s a comprehensive difference among the regions of the country, as well. In fact, brewers top top the West coast make, on average, $6,500 more than their southerly counterparts.
Weighting SalariesIf you want to compare incomes in various parts the the country, just how do you recognize they contain the very same blend of positions? What if over there are much more shift brewers top top the West coast and much more master brewers in the South? In order to normalize the different blend of task titles being compared, i weighted all the incomes in this section.
Finally, owners do pay themselves differently, yet not as you can initially expect. They actually underpay themselves. This shows up to be an artifact that the small-company brewer/owner--there are a the majority of one- or few-person work in i m sorry the owner is also a brewer. Owners make much more in life numbers, however when weighted come reflect the difference in position, they in reality pay themselves nearly $10,000 less than equivalent employees: $31,576 for owners versus $41,099 for employees. Owners are also less generous v benefits. A 3rd of all owners have no payment time off contrasted to 20% of every employees, and also owners are much less likely to have actually a health care arrangement (51% have no plan) than employees (43% have actually no plan).
Education and also ExperienceThere room two things brewers deserve to do to enhance their salaries: get a imminent degree and get an ext experience. Gaining a degree is costly and also time-consuming, however it does have a noticeable impact on a brewer"s salary. (Some breweries pay for degrees, too, and that shows up well worth the initiative from the brewer"s side.) Brewmasters/heads of imminent operations deserve 16% an ext with a degree. The dividend was smaller sized for various other positions, yet still substantial: 15% for head brewers, 9% for lead brewers, and 8% for shift brewers.
Surprisingly, experience has an even much more powerful affect on a brewer"s salary. Brewmasters and also head brewers with five or an ext years of endure make double what their counterparts with much less than a year of experience earn. The result isn"t fairly as strong with command and transition brewers, yet it"s substantial: lead brewers do 58% an ext at 5 years 보다 at one year, transition brewers 54% more. Below is a table the illustrates the strength of experience.
Benefits
As I mentioned in my earlier post, jobs can"t be lessened to an hourly fairy or salary. The quantity of ailing time offered, medical benefits, retirement planning, child care and much more may all be important for a worker. In the main, breweries space doing a decent task trying to accomplish these needs--but they can be law better. We"ll look at at this by category.
Paid Time OffOne in 5 brewery employees gain no paid time off--including ailing time. That"s true throughout the board, too, not just a burden change brewers and packaging teams need to endure. In the graph below, the percentages describe the project in question. So for example, 19% that brewmasters have actually zero job off; 15% get up come a main off, 27% gain 8-14 days, and so on. To make it scan a small easier, the darker blue the cell, the higher the percentage. You"ll an alert that the darker blue areas are clustered around 2-3 main of paid time off, which is good! (In fact, 56% of all respondents receive between eight and 21 job of PTO and practically a third receive 2 weeks or more.)
Health CareHealth care is difficult to assess. This is together true ~ above the national level together it is for workers. At plenty of jobs, employees are readily available a totally free plan that has actually a high deductible and substantial out-of-pocket costs. Those are good for catastrophes yet not regime care. At others, the employer asks the worker to pick up a portion of the price of a plan, sometimes up to half the cost--which may offer much better coverage or not. It"s complicated to shot to produce answer categories that capture all that nuance--and it"s actually unnecessary.
Most civilization understand intuitively even if it is a setup is great or not. Indeed, also owners understand this for their own coverage, and also one in five called their own plans--the ones they bought because that themselves!--bad plans. Overall, breweries might be law a lot far better on this score. Only 29% the respondents defined their plans as "good." through contrast, 71% either had a bad setup or no setup at all.
Other BenefitsFinally, I provided respondents a list of various other benefits employers occasionally offer their workers. Nearly fifty percent of respondent (45%) got no additional benefits beyond PTO and also health treatment (if they got those in ~ all). The the benefits i listed, just training and retirement plan were available by an appreciable number of breweries (29% and also 32% respectively). Ns was shocked to see that no a single brewery in this pool offered child care. Below is a breakout of the responses. Plenty of of the respondents elaborated on the "other" category and I"ll list those in the final post.
This is a lot come absorb. To market a rapid summary, here are the an essential findings:
Most brewers earn a living fairy or better, and brewers gain paid more with experience. A degree in brewing also increases wages.Brewers room paid much more in big cities, more on the West Coast, and also less in the South, Southwest and Mountain states.Brewers earn more at bigger breweries, and also they earn an ext the higher the rise up the ladder that hierarchy.Breweries are doing a an excellent job through paid time off. Over fifty percent of respondents gain a week or more, and nearly a 3rd get 2 weeks or more.Breweries aren"t offering good health care to their workers. Nearly half (44%) have actually no plan at all, and also another 27% call the arrangement they have actually "bad."Breweries don"t offer plenty of other benefits, though approximately a third do sell training and/or retirement to plan (401k).See more: What Is The Term For A Reproductive Cell "? What Is Another Word For Reproductive Cell
I to be pleasantly surprised by these results. Over there is job-related to do, however a most the worst-paid brewers room at little breweries (many of which are themselves start-ups). The more-established and also larger breweries offer their brewers a kind if no lavish menu of wages and benefits.