Cities and towns have an easy way to compare their employee compensation with pay from other municipalities across the state through the compensation survey developed by the Municipal Association of SC. The 2025 survey results are now available.
Municipal leaders can use this tool to save time when studying pay data to help inform decisions on how to set their compensation levels competitively. As a reference tool, the survey should only supplement a full class and compensation study commissioned by a city or town, and it should not be a substitute for a full study.
Users can now find the data from the 2025 Compensation Survey online. They can use it to generate customized reports, like narrowing the survey results down to information for municipalities of a particular population range or specific job positions. Reports can also include the number of full-time employees of a particular city or own, or its annual payroll. Other search functions include salary ranges, merit-raise minimums or maximums, or the range of a cost-of-living adjustment. Users can also export all of the compensation survey data into Excel spreadsheets, or download the entire compensation survey report as a PDF.
Responding to the survey is voluntary for municipalities, but higher response rates increase the usefulness of the data. The Association requests survey participation from cities and towns at the beginning of each calendar year.