Punished for loyalty

We've had a couple of campus-wide faculty meetings over the last week, concerning salaries. Only a small fraction of the faculty were there, which is perhaps surprising given that everyone gets paid. It is exam week, I suppose.

The topic at hand was salary compression and inversion. This is a nation-wide problem. Basically, across the country, the wages of faculty members are going up about 3% per year. The starting salaries of new hires are going up substantially higher -- I think I heard an estimate of something like 10% a year.

Consequently, new faculty are making relative more than senior faculty (compression). In extreme cases, new faculty make more in real dollars starting out than senior faculty (inversion).

The best strategy if you want a raise? Quit your job and get a job at another institution.