Dive Brief:

• Salary.com, a compensation data and analytics firm, and Compdata Surveys & Consulting, a comp survey data and consulting firm, have announced their merger, bringing together data from more than 25,000 organizations, 14 industries and 100 countries, Salary.com said in a statement.
• The pairing matches Salary.com's analytics platform with Compdata's deep vertical database of a slew of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and higher education.
• The combined entity said it believes the merger makes it one of the top three largest compensation data providers in the U.S. 

Dive Insight:

Pay challenges, including increased calls for pay equity and a tight talent market hovering around 4.0% unemployment, have pressed employers to improve analysis of their own compensation data. This move by Salary.com and Compdata may hint toward the growing turbulence in the space as employers seek solutions. 

"There is a lot of data out there, but it is useless without the actionable insights that HR analytics tools provide to help HR professionals really make the best use of their time and talent," Alys Reynders Scott, chief marketing officer at Salary.com, told HR Dive in an email. 

Competition for talent remains high, but salary increases have yet to match the calls for talent — though that may change in 2019, according to WorldatWork's 2018-2019 Salary Budget Survey Top-Level Results. While benefits have received a lot of fanfare as of late, money remains a powerful motivator, especially in certain industries like retail. In response to both the market and a slew of laws on pay, some employers have opted for wage increases to better attract talent and remain on top of shifting minimum wages at local levels. 

But recent pay laws focus on more than just minimum wage, which is one reason why more employers are turning to pay data. More stringent pay equity laws have swept through a handful of states, including New Jersey, Oregon and Massachusetts. States and localities also continue to pass salary history bans, which are said to help stop past inequities that kept women and minorities underpaid. The comp space is complicated and will likely remain so, prompting employers to seek modernized solutions to their needs.