Results from The Conference Board Annual Salary Increase Budgets Survey indicate that the median 2019 actual total salary increase budgets and merit increases across all employee groups are 3.00 percent. The 2019 weighted average for actual total salary increase budgets including exempt, executive, and non-exempt salaried employees is 3.19 percent. These averages have been growing very gradually for the past eight years. The Conference Board currently projects the 2019 and 2020 inflation rates to be 1.8 and 2.2 percent, respectively.