Dive Brief:

• Supply chain professionals with a bachelor's degree have a median salary of  $78,750, 24% higher than the national median, according to a survey of 2,467 U.S supply chain professionals by the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM).
• The survey showed broad job satisfaction within supply chain roles, with 88% of respondents saying they had a positive career outlook.
• ASCM describes the gender pay gap in the supply chain profession as "narrowing." There is no gap between genders for employees under 30. But female supply chain professionals age 30 to 39 have a median salary that is 93% the size of their male counterparts. ASCM points out this is "higher than what women on average nationally earn which is 82% of what men earn." But for employees aged 50 or over the gap is worse than the national average with female supply chain professionals in this age range making about 79% of what the men their age are bringing home.

Dive Insight:

The ASCM survey found salary equality between men and women when they're under 30, but the gap begins to widen as people stay in their career, ASCM CEO Abe Eshkenazi told Supply Chain Dive in an interview.

"The challenge that we see here is that the longer they stay in the field, the greater the pay disparity between men and women, as often correlates to job opportunities as well as considerations for promotions and or leadership in organizations," Eshkenazi said.

To lessen the gap for older employees, the industry will need to focus on providing leadership opportunities to women, he said. 

Thirty seven percent of the total supply chain workforce is female, and just 14% of senior vice president, executive vice president and C-suite positions are occupied by women, according to a blog post by Ken Cottrill, the editorial director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation and Logistics.

The educational pathways to the world of supply chain have changed significantly in recent decades. In the mid-1990s there were half a dozen to a dozen supply chain programs in the world. That figure has now swelled to over 500 baccalaureate or master's programs, Eshkenazi said.

Many of the people who have leadership roles, and have been in the supply chain industry for 20 years or more, got there with either an engineering or finance degree. Eshkenazi expects the growth in supply chain-specific academic programs will help to narrow the gap between men and women in leadership positions.

Prior to the pandemic, there were six job openings in the supply chain industry for every qualified person available, Eshkenazi said. How the industry's hiring practices will change as a result of the health crisis remain to be seen, but it will result in "quite a bit more focus on risk [and] resiliency in supply chain," he said.

The pandemic will cause consumers to be more conscious of supply chains, and generate "a greater demand for competent capable supply chain professionals leading organizations," Eshkenazi said.