RISING SALARIES: A SELLERS' MARKET FOR SKILLS

DESPITE the Government's anti-inflation campaign--which many employers would like to take to heart by holding down salaries--everybody seems to be earning more and more these days. Congress recently doubled the U.S. President's salary to $200,000, while boosting the pay of its own members from $30,000 to $42,500. Barbra Streisand this month signed a contract with Las Vegas' new International Hotel that gives her an estimated $500,000 (plus stock in the hotel) for four weeks work a year. Harvard Business School graduates now begin their working lives at an average $12,000 a year. At leading Wall Street law firms, starting salaries for newly recruited lawyers, which ran about $7,500 a decade ago, now stand at $15,000 and are likely to go higher. Today the long-impecunious college professors average $18,000, and in private universities $21,000. Many supplement their base pay with consulting jobs at up to $250 a day; professors of business may gross as much as $60,000 a year.

Salaries are rising because skills are short, and anybody with a specialty--or plain verve and nerve--is greatly in demand. With unemployment down to a 15-year low of 3.3%, and want ads bulging in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, there are more openings for $15,000-a-year engineers and $10,000-a-year computer programmers than the work force can possibly fill. People are hopping from job to job as never before, always searching for--and usually getting --the richer reward. Some jobs, of course, pay conspicuously more than others. From campus to board room, there is increasing discussion about who gets how much--and why.

Highest and Lowest. Americans are undoubtedly the world's highest-paid people, though Europeans and Japanese collect far flossier fringe benefits. Still, a $7,000-a-year bank teller hardly feels happy about the fact that he may be earning 25% more than his Continental counterpart. The human tendency is to gauge compensation not by one's needs but by the relative pay of peers--countrymen, colleagues and neighbors. Many truck drivers last year earned more than $15,000, thanks to the Teamsters' knack of squeezing out the most in wage negotiations. Human nature being what it is, the average driver will naturally expect even more, especially if he happens to live next door to, say, a senior airline captain. The pilot's $45,000 top annual pay will climb to $57,000 when the jumbo jets go into service later this year.

The rules that determine who gets what in the U.S. economy are at once distressingly inequitable and remarkably logical. Tradition, profit, risk and decision making all play a part. Regional pay differences exist, but are narrowing as executive mobility increases. The Fantus Co., a site-seeking firm for industry, reckons that for young executives living costs in New York run 12% higher than in Chicago and 40% higher than in Dallas. Although some companies give Manhattan executives premium pay, it does not always make up for the cost-of-living differential.

Big and basic old industries like primary metals and insurance offer some of the lowest salaries in U.S. business. Reasons: they have always done so, and their earnings tend to be modest. Railroads, insurance firms and public utilities are also at the bottom end of the ladder, largely because they are heavily regulated by Government, which limits profits. In addition, companies in the low-paying industries often favor a committee form of decision making that minimizes risk and personal initiative. They tend to promote from within; security and seniority are highly regarded. By contrast, industries that seek executives from the outside are characterized by the job jumping that bids up prices.

Logically, the companies that pay best count on individual executives for considerable decision making that directly affects profits. Often the decisions involve annual changes in styles and products. The most generous companies include department stores and manufacturers in the areas of tobacco, aerospace, drugs, electronics, cosmetics, appliances and autos. The highest-paid U.S. executive is the biggest decision maker in the world's largest company: General Motors Chairman James Roche, who in 1967 earned $733,316 in salary and bonus.

Risk Is the Key. No matter how high they rise, the hired employees of corporations rarely earn as much as owners, partners or other entrepreneurs, who get a payoff for personal risk. Apart from top management, lawyers are the best-rewarded corporate employees, averaging about $29,000 in high legal-department positions. But lawyers in private practice have no ceilings, and incomes of $50,000 for younger partners in leading firms are fairly common.

Similarly, executives of commercial banks earn about one-third to one-half as much as investment bankers, who are essentially in business for themselves. A vice president at a big New York City commercial bank may earn as little as $25,000 a year, though he can hope to become a major bank president at $250,000 or so. Partners at Lehman Brothers and other investment banking houses can earn $500,000 or more a year. Their incomes depend upon how much capital they contribute to the firm and the size of the mergers, underwritings and other deals that they bring in. Unlike commercial bankers, however, the investment bankers have partnership arrangements that make them personally liable for losses.

Men who have the responsibility of handling other people's money usually make large amounts of it. For running Massachusetts Investors Trust, one of the nation's biggest mutual funds, Chairman Kenneth L. Isaacs' pay package in 1967 amounted to $400,000. On Wall Street, the starting salary for securities analysts has escalated in the past five years from $7,000 to at least $10,000, and ranking analysts get $25,000 to $60,-000. On top of that, executives of brokerages traditionally pocket bonuses of from one month's to two years' salary. Even better off than the analysts are the most active customer's men; they get 25% to 40% of the commissions on their transactions, and often earn well over $100,000 a year. Stephen Weiss, 33, a vice president of A. G. Becker & Co. in Manhattan, last year handled approximately $80 million worth of securities--mostly for individual investors--and earned about $500,000.

God and Mammon. "Creativity" has become an increasingly popular word in U.S. business, and nowhere more so than in the field of advertising. Young copywriters start as low as $6,500, but fairly often reach $35,000 within five years; some of the hotter copy chiefs and art directors hit $100,000 before the age of 35. Advertising account executives, who used to be at the high end of Madison Avenue's scale, seldom earn more than $40,000. Eli Silberman, creative supervisor at Manhattan's Mc-Cann-Erickson agency, explains the shift: "The effectiveness of the ad is what counts--so the people who create the ads have become more important."

Even some clergymen are realizing richer worldly rewards. While Catholic priests in New York have to get by on a maximum of $2,400 a year plus free room and board, the starting salary of an Episcopal minister in California is $7,000 plus housing, and the state's bishop, C. Kilmer Myers, makes $17,000. Rabbis are the best off, perhaps because Jews do not hold such firm beliefs as do Christians about the rewards of the hereafter. A Reform rabbi receives up to $15,000 in his first congregation and can look forward later to $30,000, and in some cases $50,000.

Some of the big money finds its way to the men who recruit and place other executives. A vice president of an executive recruiting firm may earn $50,000 or $60,000--substantially more than most of the people he puts into jobs. The "head hunters," of course, make decisions that very basically influence the future of many companies. On balance, the people who are paid best are those who are regularly called upon to display one of the most valuable of all commodities: judgment.

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