Free Pay Data

Photo credit Kristina Paukshtite

We are passionate about paying employees what they are worth. That is why we partner with employers to provide compensation consulting advice and coach high performers as they negotiate their base pay, bonus, sales commissions, and long-term incentives (equity/stock).

  • To learn more about how we can help you if you are an employer, click here to learn about our HR & Compensation Consulting services.

  • And if you are an employee negotiating a new job offer, asking for a promotion or asking for a pay raise at your current employer, click here to learn about our Pay Negotiation Coaching services.

Here is a list of Common Compensation Terms and Formulas. And because it is a common question, click here to learn the difference between Cost of Living and Cost of Labor.

Click on the bold text to view the resource. In alphabetical order by title…

  • Buffer: Anyone can see what they might make at Buffer by plugging in their own data for location, experience, and so forth.

  • Bureau of Labor Statistics: The BLS publishes a large amount of information on the wages, earnings, and benefits of workers. Generally, this information is categorized in one or more of the following ways: geographic area, occupation, and industry.

  • Comparably: This site focuses on providing both compensation and equity data to users. It also provides workplace culture reviews on companies.

  • Dice: This was started as a bulletin board for recruiters. They started collecting and reporting salary data focused on tech and engineering workers in the 2000s.

  • EEOC Explore: Uses aggregate information from employer EEO-1 reports, which are collected annually from private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees. EEOC Explore enables stakeholders to explore and compare data trends across a number of categories, including location, sex, race and ethnicity, and industry sector without the need for experience in computer programming or statistical analysis.

  • Fairygodboss: An employer review site for women. They help you get the inside scoop on pay, corporate culture, benefits, and work flexibility. They offer company ratings, job listings, discussion boards, and career advice.

  • Feds DataCenter: Provides data on salaries and benefits for many employees employed by the federal government. The data are compiled from public records released by the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies.

  • Glassdoor: This tool collects information from employees about job title, experience, company and location to provide predicted pay ranges and market worth. Also includes compensation data from job listings. Glassdoor is known for its extensive company reviews and employee feedback.

  • Hired: A salary calculator with data from large tech companies for software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and sales reps.

  • Indeed: The well-known job site aggregator has a salary search tool. Indeed lets you use keywords to search, in addition to job titles.

  • Levels.fyi: This is crowdsourced data summarized into leveling charts that track how levels at one company correspond to levels at another and how compensation within each company’s level varies.

  • LinkedIn: Provides salary tool which lets verified users submit information anonymously and view salary information across professions.

  • Living Wage Calculator from MIT: Families and individuals working in low-wage jobs make insufficient income to meet minimum standards given the local cost of living. MIT developed a living wage calculator to estimate the cost of living in your community or region based on typical expenses. The tool helps individuals, communities, and employers determine a local wage rate that allows residents to meet minimum standards of living.

  • myStockOptions.com: This firm is a source of expertise on stock options, restricted stock, restricted stock units, performance shares, stock appreciation rights, and employee stock purchase plans. They specialize in making complex stock compensation topics clearly understandable. You may also find this article helpful becuase it provides The 15 Crucial Questions About Stock Options. And Angel.co provides start up salary and equity data.

  • Numbeo: A tool to compare cost of living and other indicators like food prices, gas prices, restaurants index, and property prices.

  • OANDA: Their currency converter is helpful when you want a point in time or a period of time currency conversion.

  • PayScale: They created the world’s largest crowdsourced data set. Plan to answer questions about your pay and job to get access to the database. They offer a free salary report based on experience, education, and other factors. Students should check out its College Salary Report for the lowdown on what various majors can expect to earn (and some negotiation tips). The career research section includes a Career Path Explorer with salary data for the jobs you want.

  • RepVue: Discover the pay level for common sales related jobs like Account Executive, Sales Engineer, Account Manager, Customer Success Manager, and Sales Development Rep.

  • Salary.com: This is a popular salary-specific job site. It lists every position in a field with free salary info. Their collection of data includes cost-of-living calculators, comparison tools, and lists of benefits, as well as negotiation tips. Salary.com doubles as a career site, providing job listings and advice.

  • Salary Expert: With data updated daily, Salary Expert offers not only free salary reports but cost of living analysis and career salary potential. You can also search for jobs by salary, if you’re thinking about switching fields.

  • SalaryList: All the data comes from official reporting by companies or the United States Department of Labor, so you know you’re getting accurate information. The site provides salary data records for existing jobs by title, company, and state.

  • Stack Overflow: Online community for programmers to connect, search for jobs and support one another. Their salary calculator shows what you would make working for Stack Overflow.

  • Trading Economics provides its users with accurate information for 196 countries including historical data and forecasts for more than 20 million economic indicators, exchange rates, stock market indexes, government bond yields and commodity prices.

  • U.S. Census Bureau: There are many datasets and surveys available to the public on this website. Income, income inequality, and poverty data are just a few of the readily available datasets published.

  • U.S. Department of State: You will find links to a variety of resources related to pay, cost of living, and relocation.

  • World Population Review - Learn more about the standard of living by country and view the Quality of Life Index.