15-minute Survey Calculates the Region's Pay

Grant County employers have until September 18th to help set the region's compensation benchmark, and, in return, to see everyone else's numbers.

Every employer believes it pays fairly. Rather fewer can prove it.

This is not a failing of character. It is a failing of data. In the absence of good regional figures, compensation decisions tend to be made the way most difficult decisions are made, by instinct, by anecdote, and by whatever a departing employee happened to say on the way out. It is a poor way to run a payroll, and an expensive one. Guess too low and you train your best people for a competitor down the road. Guess too high and you erode the margins that keep the doors open. Either way, you are flying blind in a market that has grown a good deal more turbulent.

There is now a straightforward remedy, and it costs you nothing but a little time.

About the Survey

The Grant County Economic Growth Council, together with eight neighboring counties through Forge ECI, is conducting the 2026 East Central Indiana Wage & Benefit Survey. It asks local employers a simple question, occupation by occupation: what do you pay, and what do you offer? The answers are compiled not by us, but by the Purdue Center for Regional Development, a research body whose entire business is turning scattered figures into something you can actually use.

The result is a regional report covering entry, average and top hourly wages across dozens of roles, alongside the benefits: insurance, retirement, leave, bonuses, shift premiums, that increasingly decide whether an offer is accepted or declined. For a nine-county labor market, it is as close to a compensation map as you are likely to get.

The completed report goes first, in October, to the employers who took part. Sit this one out and you will be negotiating salaries next year against neighbors who have seen the board while you have not.

Two concerns usually surface at this point, and both are easily dispatched.

Confidentiality. Only researchers at Purdue see your company's individual responses. Your figures are never published on their own and never shared with anyone outside the PCRD team. They are aggregated with everyone else's, which is precisely what makes the final numbers trustworthy, and precisely why your own remain invisible within them.

Time. You do not employ every job listed, and you are not expected to. Skip the categories that do not apply and complete only those that do. The online survey lets you save your work and return to it later, and a PDF version is available so you can gather your numbers before you begin.

A Word on Timing

Completed surveys are due by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 18th, 2026. That is enough time if you start this week.

Good data compounds. The more Grant County employers who take part, the sharper the picture becomes for setting competitive pay, for defending the pay you already offer, and for making the case that this is a region that knows its own worth.

Fifteen minutes now buys you a year of better decisions. We would take that trade.

Take the survey: complete the 2026 Wage & Benefit Survey.