Compensation 101
This is the fixed amount of pay an employee earns before bonuses or incentives.
What is Base Salary?
This document outlines duties, responsibilities, and qualifications for a role.
What is a job description?
This document confirms the terms of employment such as job title, pay, and start date.
What is an offer letter?
This measure represents the middle value in a dataset.
What is the median?
This Chicago agency is responsible for public transit including buses and trains.
What is the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)?
This is the standard percentage increase given to employees based on performance during a merit cycle.
What is a merit increase?
This term refers to the key duties that make up the majority of a job’s day-to-day work.
What are primary responsibilities?
This is the recurring review of employee performance, often annually or semi-annually.
What is a performance review?
This indicates the value below which a given percentage of observations fall (i.e., 75th percentile).
What is a percentile?
This is the highest-traffic station in the entire CTA rail system.
What is Clark/Lake station?
This is the relationship between an employee’s pay and the midpoint of the salary range expressed as a percentage.
What is compa-ratio?
This classification determines whether a role is eligible for overtime pay.
What is exempt vs non-exempt status?
This HR function handles employee complaints, discipline, and workplace investigations.
What is employee relations?
If a salary range is $50,000–$70,000, the midpoint is
What is $60,000?
This document outlines wages, benefits, work rules, and conditions of employment negotiated between CTA and unions.
What is a collective bargaining agreement (CBA)?
This is the difference between the maximum and minimum of a salary range.
What is range spread?
This is the process of comparing internal job roles to external market data to ensure proper leveling and pay alignment.
What is job benchmarking?
In a unionized environment, this refers to enforcing and interpreting contract rules related to pay, discipline, and working conditions.
What is labor relations?
This statistical measure shows the average of all salaries in a dataset but can be skewed by extreme values.
What is the mean/average?
This technology allows riders to pay fares by tapping a card or mobile device instead of using cash or paper passes.
What is Ventra?
When employees in the same role are paid similarly despite different performance or tenure, this issue may occur.
What is Pay Compression?
This section of a job description explains why the role exists in the organization.
What is the position summary?
This federal law requires employers to provide equal pay for equal work regardless of gender.
What is the Equal Pay Act?
This method evaluates how competitive an organization’s pay is compared to the external labor market using survey data and position matching.
What is market pricing?
This is CTA’s official mission statement
What is “We deliver quality, affordable transit services that link people, jobs and communities”?