NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - It pays once again to be an MBA.

After a post-dotcom slump, MBA holders are once again scoring large salaries and signing bonuses, according to a report in USA Today.

Salaries and signing bonuses for fresh MBA graduates jumped in 2005 to a record $106,000, up 13.5 percent from 2004, according to a survey from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). Salaries alone surged to $88,600, topping the previous record of $85,400 set in 2001. The average bonus paid by an investment bank to a fresh MBA graduate in 2005 was $40,000.

Consulting firms and investment banks are again hiring aggressively after cutting jobs sharply during the recent recession. But demand for MBAs is also rising from the healthcare industry as well as technology, the U.S. government and the not-for-profit sector.

And while more than 100,000 MBA degrees are awarded in the U.S. each year, that number is also expected to climb as a steadily increasing number of prospective students have signed up to take the Graduate Management Admission Test in the last two years, the newspaper reported.