Wages for most jobs are barely keeping pace with inflation, but Accounting workers are bucking that trend.

Salaries for finance and accounting professionals were up an average of 4.5% in ’07 — that’s more than 36% higher than the rest of the workforce.

That data comes to us from the Association of Financial Professionals.

What’s driving the increase? As the financial world gets more complicated and moves faster, management is realizing that accounting and finance pros who have the skills and temperament to keep up are worth their weight in gold to the company’s bottom line.

If your income hasn’t kept up with the average boost your peers saw, make sure that you’ve keeping up in these key areas — and that you’ve made your boss aware of your value by:

• Increasing your responsibilities at work
• Earning professional certifications, and
• Making measurable contributions to profits.

Those are the factors that are driving most of the growth in salaries.

Tags: A/P, Career outlook, Economic outlook, Payroll