08 June 2006 | Gareth Mytton

Purchasing directors have overtaken their finance colleagues in basic pay but slipped behind their counterparts in sales, according to new research.

The average basic salary, excluding bonuses, for a purchasing director is £66,267, according to the Purchasing and Supply R£wards 2006 survey, from CIPS and Croner Reward.

At the next two levels - senior manager and senior/middle manager - purchasers retain the position as the highest earners. A senior procurement manager earns, on average, £56,113 a year, more than £6,000 above the average for peers in other professions. Senior/middle managers earn £44,000, compared with an average of £40,000.

Pay for middle managers and junior managers is in line with national averages but typically below their colleagues in IT, finance, HR, marketing and sales.

The average pay settlement for purchasers in 2005 was 3 per cent, slightly below the 3.2 per cent recorded by Incomes Data Services for the economy as a whole.

The CIPS/Croner survey found buyers in the services sector earned more than those in the public-sector and manufacturing at all levels. Senior managers in services earn £60,000 on average, compared with £51,761 for the same level in the public sector.

CIPS membership adds as much as £2,000 to salaries for middle managers and below.

Bonuses were roughly in line with last year, except the most senior professionals, whose average bonus rose by £1,400 to £6,400.

The gender pay gap, which almost disappeared in the 2004 report before re-emerging last year, has closed slightly.

For senior purchasing managers, women earn 14.2 per cent less than men, compared with a 17 per cent gap last year. But at junior manager level, women earn 3.1 per cent more than their male counterparts, compared with a 3.4 per cent deficit last year.

Six out of 10 purchasers rated their job satisfaction as good or excellent and 64 per cent felt their pay was in line with the market.

Christian Shawcross, managing consultant at recruitment company PSD Group, said that in financial services, purchasing directors' basic salaries were likely to reach six figures.

Vivienne Copeland, director at Croner Reward, said: "It is good news to see directors and senior managers are progressing in the pay league." But she expressed disappointment that no female purchasing directors had responded to the survey.

The survey covers around 1,600 CIPS members, and 3,472 professionals including the other functions in the report.

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