The Department of Labor (DOL)  has released some new mobile and Internet Browser apps designed to help employees, but recruiters may find a couple of them helpful when negotiating pay rates.

These new apps are the product of online and mobile develpment contests that the DOL launched in July. The "Labor Wage Statistics" and the "Occupation Wage Data"mobile apps both allow you to to find salaries based on occupation, industry, and location right from your Android smartphone. These apps do not appear to be available on the iPhone at this time.

A similar app for your Internet Browser called "Where are the Jobs?" allows you to to not only look up salaries for specific occupations but also see the top states for those occupations and the average number of jobs each state has in that area.  The OES Map Web app also provides wage and job information by occupation and state.

As a benchmark to begin negotiations for contractor hourly pay rates, you can divide the average annual salary for a comparable direct position by 2,080 hours (approximately one year) to get the hourly rate.  We've saved you some of the work by providing a free Salary-to-Hourly Conversion table that you can download.

Debbie Fledderjohann is the President of Top Echelon Contracting, Inc.