The Air Conditioning Contractors of America has released its third technician compensation and benefits survey.

The 2009 version builds on previous versions, covering the same questions for benchmarking purposes, as well as highlighting additional responses concerning the current economic conditions.

“When you’re trying to attract and retain the best HVACR talent available to your company, you need to be armed with information about what’s available in the marketplace,” said Hilary Atkins, ACCA general counsel and author of the report. “This report will allow contractors to size up their own offerings against others in the industry, making for a well-researched strategy for compensating their technicians.”

This benchmarking guide analyzes data provided by 443 HVAC contractors nationwide. The survey covers a broad range of topics such as the annual base salaries for technicians, determination of technician compensation benefits offered to full-time technicians and technician contribution to health care plans.

Annual paid vacation days for technicians, company contributions to employee retirement plans, along with medical benefits, bonuses and overtime are also addressed.

The data is compared based on a number of factors, including geography, employee numbers and sales volume.