How to Research What a Role Actually Pays

Why we do not publish salary figures

It would be easy to fill this site with average-salary tables, and every competitor does. We do not, for a straightforward reason: we have no verified data source we could stand behind, and a number presented with false confidence is worse than no number at all. Pay varies by location, sector, company size, seniority and the specific responsibilities of a role, and a national average collapses all of that into a figure that is wrong for almost everyone who reads it.

The failure is asymmetric, which is what makes it serious. If a table understates the market and you anchor on it, you may accept less than you could have had for the entire time you stay in the job, and that difference compounds into every future rise. So instead of giving you a number, this guide gives you the method for building one, using sources you can verify and cite in the conversation itself.

• Aggregator averages. Frequently based on small samples, self-reported, undated, and blending several seniorities under one title. Useful only as a very rough sanity check.
• Old data. Pay in a fast-moving specialism can shift substantially within a year. Any figure without a date attached is not evidence.
• National figures for a local decision. The same role can differ enormously between two cities in the same country. National means nothing to your negotiation.
• Title-based comparison. An "analyst" at one company is a graduate role and at another runs a team of six. Compare the work described, never the label.

The sources worth using

Advertised ranges

The most current evidence you can get, and in a growing number of jurisdictions employers must publish them. Collect postings for roles genuinely comparable to yours, in your location, and record the range with the date and the actual responsibilities listed. Twenty of these is a dataset you built and can defend.

Published public pay scales

Government, healthcare and education pay structures are published in most countries, and they are real, verifiable numbers. Even if you are heading into the private sector they anchor the general shape of a career ladder in your field.

People who do the work

Former colleagues, people you trained with, professional community members. Ask about ranges and bands rather than personal figures, which is a much easier question for people to answer. This is the only source that reflects what is actually being paid rather than advertised.

Recruiters in your specialism

A specialist recruiter who places your kind of role sees actual offers weekly. They have an interest in the numbers they quote, so treat it as one input, but they are closer to the market than any website.

Professional bodies and unions

Where they exist for your field, they often publish member surveys or negotiated scales. Sector-specific and usually far better grounded than general aggregators.

Building your range

1. 1
   Define the job, not the title

   Write five lines describing what you actually do: scope, people, budget, systems, decisions you own. This is what you will compare against, because titles are noise.

2. 2
   Collect fifteen to twenty live postings

   In your location or the location of the job, for work that genuinely matches your five lines. Record the stated range, the date, the company size and the responsibilities. Where no range is stated, note the posting anyway — the description is still evidence about level.

3. 3
   Discard the outliers and read the middle

   You are looking for where the bulk of comparable postings cluster, not the highest number you can find. One unusually high posting is a different job with the same title.

4. 4
   Adjust for the things postings do not say

   Company size, sector, whether the role is remote or requires a commute, and how the total package differs. A lower base at an employer with a strong retirement contribution can be the better-paid job.

5. 5
   Sense-check it with a person

   One conversation with someone doing the work will tell you whether your range is plausible faster than another ten hours of reading. Ask about bands, not their personal salary.

6. 6
   Write down the range and the sources

   A range with reasoning attached is what you take into a negotiation. "Comparable roles in this region are advertising in this band" is a sentence you can say with confidence, because you built it.

Reading a posted range properly

Pay transparency rules in a number of US states and, increasingly, across the EU mean more postings now carry a range. That is genuinely useful, and it needs to be read with some care, because a posted range is not a promise about you.

Using what you found

Your research does two jobs. It sets your own three numbers before an offer conversation, and it gives you a sentence that makes an ask credible instead of arbitrary. That sentence should be short and calm — a statement about the market, not a demand. Nobody needs to see your spreadsheet, but you need to have built it, because the confidence in how you say the number comes from knowing where it came from.

From here, how to negotiate a salary offer covers the conversation itself, and the offer comparison tool handles the part where two packages have to be compared on more than base. If your research suggests you are already underpaid where you are, asking for a raise is the other place this work pays off.