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What's been happening in the labor market, as employment slowly begins to recover? To find out what people are being paid now, Inc. teamed up with PayScale, a Seattle-based provider of salary information and operator of one of the largest databases on compensation at privately held companies. What did we learn? As the chart to the right shows, salaries (defined here as cash compensation and bonuses) at private-sector companies began to recover in mid-2009 but haven't budged much since. Executive pay—especially that of CEOs—has been on a wild ride, largely following the trajectory of the U.S. gross domestic product.	Click on the links below the graph to add and subtract data sets
Go to Inc.com to read more about how much Americans are being paid in 2011. Embed this image on your site, and share this page: <a href="http://www.inc.com/popups/2011-compensation-guide-executive-pay.html"><img src="http://www.inc.com/popups/2011-compensation-guide-executive-pay.gif" alt="2011 Compensation Guide Executive Pay"width="560" border="0"></a><br />(Source: <a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/201107/2011-compensation-guide.html">Inc.com</a>)

Executive Pay

is closely tied to bonuses and other incentives. As a result, it's a lot more volatile than that of rank-and-file workers.

Pay for private-sector workers at all levels took a plunge in late 2008, following a big drop in GDP growth.

7.7%

CEO compensation rose by this amount in mid-2009, as the economy began to grow again.

$215,700

Median compensation for CEOs of privately held businesses with 250 or fewer employees in 2011

$151,500

Median compensation for C Suite execs at companies with 250 or fewer employees

$49,990

Median compensation for all full-time, private-sector employees