I THINK MINING

Tuesday is the day I try to blog about salaries, wages, and income in the mining industry.  Here are some finds from the past week or so.

A rather badly written blog posting that puts the salary of people working in the mining industry in England in the £50,000 to £59,999 bracket.  Not too bad considering the exchange rate, I suppose.

Compare this to the salaries of process people in the Australian mining industry–details at this link.  For example, it seems the mill superintendent gets between 125 K and 160 K, and the graduate metallurgist between 65 K and 80K .  There is lot more, some dated, on mining salaries in Australia at this link.   In poor prose they say:

  According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report, the average mining salary was AUSD 100, 000 per annum, whereas the average full time annual salary across sectors was AUSD 58, 874 around the middle of 2008. Most women still earn less than men in mining. However, all major stakeholders in the industry are working on ways to resolve the gender pay gap issue and attract more women to enter the mining workforce.

    From the South Dakota School of Mine, this news on mining and mining-related graduate salaries:

The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology offers four of the five top-paying majors for new college graduates in the United States, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), profiled by Forbes.com.  The majors include:

• Chemical Engineering: School of Mines chemical engineering graduates have average starting salaries of $61,750. Companies hiring these graduates include Cargill, Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Halliburton, and others.
• Mining Engineering: Students who graduate from the School of Mines with a mining engineering degree command average starting salaries of $63,711. Companies hiring these graduates include Barrick Goldstrike, Kiewit, MAPTEK, Peabody Energy, Rio Tinto Energy, and others.
• Computer Engineering: Computer engineering graduates from the School of Mines receive average starting salaries of $56,150. Companies hiring these graduates include EchoStar Technologies, Garmin, Innovative Systems, Rockwell Collins, and others.
• Computer Science: School of Mines computer science graduates have average starting salaries of $55,425. Companies hiring these graduates include L-3 Communications, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Rockwell Collins, and others.

A report of large salaries for mining executives in Australia at this link, which reports:

Two executives from the Australian mining industry have placed among the top five highest paid company executives in the country.  BHP Billiton’s chief executive Marius Kloppers and Leighton Holdings’ boss Wal King placed fourth and fifth respectively in The Australian Financial Review’s annual analysis of Australian executive salaries. Kloppers’ total pay package for the financial year was $12.8 million, while King is set to earn $12.5 million.

     Then this “sad” story from a site I have never seen before, miningmx–I do not even know who the folk are but their salary and earnings makes for fun reading—I quote only a part of the linked report:

Now that the misers from Metorex are no longer running Pan African Resources may we suggest the remuneration committee do something about improving CEO Jan Nelson’s pay.  Nelson has to be one of the most poorly paid CEOs running a junior mining company despite the fact that he is one of the most successful. Pan African made a mining profit of ₤22m (about R275m) in its financial year to end-June and reported a taxed profit of ₤8.1m (about R100m).  For that Nelson was paid ₤92,168 (about R1,15m) “total cost to company.” He got no share-based payments last year. For financial 2008 he made ₤88,715 (about R1m) “total cost to company”.  The 2009 Pan African annual report reveals he was awarded a total of 18m share options in 2007 at 2p each so the nominal cost of that to the company is ₤360,000 (about R4.5m). Now that the misers from Metorex are no longer running Pan African Resources may we suggest the remuneration committee do something about improving CEO Jan Nelson’s pay.   Nelson has to be one of the most poorly paid CEOs running a junior mining company despite the fact that he is one of the most successful. Pan African made a mining profit of ₤22m (about R275m) in its financial year to end-June and reported a taxed profit of ₤8.1m (about R100m). For that Nelson was paid ₤92,168 (about R1,15m) “total cost to company.” He got no share-based payments last year. For financial 2008 he made ₤88,715 (about R1m) “total cost to company”.  The 2009 Pan African annual report reveals he was awarded a total of 18m share options in 2007 at 2p each so the nominal cost of that to the company is ₤360,000 (about R4.5m).

Oh well that is Africa for you.