On average, employers will pay interns an hourly wage of $17.13 — 5% higher than last year — according to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Interestingly, however, the survey also reported employers will be offering about 21% fewer internships this year than in 2008.

Here’s the average hourly pay broken down by the intern’s field of study:

• Business — $15.93
• Communications — $16.00
• Sciences — $16.60
• Computer Sciences — $17.20
• Engineering — $18.26

Of course, those are national numbers. When benchmarking your own intern compensation, you’ll need to take a look at regional data, too.

Most employers aren’t doing so — 56% of companies don’t consider generational differences when planning compensation strategies, according to a recent study by World at Work. And only 3% are actively executing a plan that takes all generations into account.

Is that a bad thing? On one hand, with benefits such as health care and retirement plans, older employees may have significantly different wants and needs than their younger counterparts.

But on the other hand, all employees are different and may have varying preferences no matter what generation they’re in.

What about at your company? Do you offer different packages to attract workers in different age groups? Has it worked? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Job candidates are now expecting less starting pay and doing less negotiating when it comes to salaries, according to a new report by Jobfox.com

A sample of job ads in the 25 most common job categories in the past five months showed that in nine categories (36%), starting salary offers have decreased over that period. None of the categories saw an increase, and the other 16 stayed flat.

Economic troubles have filtered down to candidates, who are bargaining less and accepting jobs with lower pay than they would have several months ago, says Jobfox CEO Rob McGovern.

It’s still a tough line for companies to walk, though — a slow economy doesn’t mean candidates should be low-balled. The best approach? Gather info from multiple sources — including industry associations, your peers and your competitors — to make sure you’re paying what’s appropriate in the current market.

Not this year, according to a recent WorldatWork survey. On average, companies plan to increase salary budgets by 3.9% over the next year. The same goes for salaries the following year, too.

Why doesn’t the economy seem to be having a negative effect on employee compensation?

One reason employers are keeping raises steady is rising inflation that’s eating up bigger and bigger chunks of employees’ salaries.

Therefore, employers need to keep offering raises to attract and retain workers.

There are many reasons, but here’s one way your managers can make sure reviews are more successful:

Keep the performance review and compensation discussion separate.

These two things often go hand in hand, but the review should be fully completed before salary is discussed. If not:

• the employee might get overly defensive, rather than take responsibility for his or her work, and
• he or she might start making statements like, “I’ll do more … if you pay me more.”

But if the review is finished before the pay discussion, employees will be more receptive to the manager’s critique.