When it comes to finding accurate and up-to-date salary information, there are a few key websites that stand out as the best resources. In the opening section of this article, we’ll provide a quick overview of the top sites and what makes each one useful for researching salaries.
Glassdoor
Glassdoor is one of the most popular sites for salary data because it allows users to self-report their salaries anonymously. This crowdsourced information provides a large volume of real-world salary reports across many different companies, locations, and job titles. Some key advantages of Glassdoor for salary research include:
- Contains millions of user-submitted salaries from a diverse range of industries and job roles
- Salary estimates are location-based, allowing comparison across different geographic regions
- Can filter salary reports by factors like company size, years of experience, education level, etc.
- Provides salary ranges and averages rather than just individual data points
- Cost of living comparisons allow adjustment between metro areas
The main downside is that the accuracy relies on honest user-contributed data. However, the large volume of salary reports helps minimize potential bias.
PayScale
PayScale is another large crowdsourced database, but with some key differences from Glassdoor. Here are some of PayScale’s notable features:
- Over 54 million salary profiles in the database, sourced from employees, employers and payroll data
- Adjusts crowdsourced pay data using proprietary compensation models for accuracy
- Provides real-time age and gender pay gap reporting tools
- Customizable salary comparison reports for specific careers or location
- Salary profiles include total compensation details like bonuses and benefits
PayScale requires users to provide more in-depth profile information for higher accuracy. The combination of crowdsourced and modeled data aims to provide precise, real-time salary averages.
Salary.com
Salary.com focuses on employer-reported salary profiles and job posting data, rather than crowdsourcing. Key features include:
- Salary ranges and medians compiled from employer-submitted surveys
- Data validated and modeled by compensation experts for accuracy
- Salary comparison tool for specific job titles across locations
- Cost of living calculator and comparisons
- Job listings with estimated salary ranges for open positions
The employer-based data provides a useful benchmark against crowdsourced sites. However, the data relies on employer participation so may not represent all industries equally.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides highly credible and comprehensive salary data focused on national averages rather than specific employers. Advantages of the BLS include:
- Salaries are empirically-sourced on a national scale
- Data is segmented by job category, experience level, location, and other factors
- Salary information is calculated and validated based on scientific data analysis
- Provides wage growth trends over time rather than just current snapshots
- Data includes detailed information on benefits, bonuses, and compensation beyond just base salary
The BLS provides unbiased, methodologically-sound salary information. However, data is only updated annually so may lag behind crowdsourced sites.
Conclusion
In summary, each salary website provides unique advantages for researching and comparing average salaries, as well as calculating personalized expected salary ranges.
Website | Major Advantage | Major Disadvantage |
---|---|---|
Glassdoor | Large volume of crowdsourced salaries | Data accuracy depends on user honesty |
PayScale | Proprietary models to increase accuracy | Requires user profile depth for custom estimates |
Salary.com | Employer-submitted compensation data | Potentially uneven industry representation |
Bureau of Labor Statistics | Scientific, unbiased national salary data | Lags crowdsourced sites in timeliness |
When evaluating salary data, consider factors like the source, sample size, geographic specifics, and customization options. For most accurate understanding of average pay for a given role, using multiple salary sites together provides the clearest picture.
Now that we’ve covered the major salary websites on a high level, let’s take a deeper dive into the details of how each site gathers and presents data…
How Glassdoor Calculates Salaries
Glassdoor collects salary data entirely through voluntary, anonymous employee submissions. When submitting a salary, users must share their job title, employer name, location, and base pay. Glassdoor also allows users to provide additional information such as bonuses, tips, overtime pay, and commission.
To enhance accuracy, Glassdoor’s statistical model excludes potential outliers and accounts for factors like experience level, company size, education, gender, and ethnicity. However, the base salary data points themselves are unverified and rely fully on honest user contribution.
In addition to individual salaries, Glassdoor presents the data in aggregate as salary ranges, averages, and medians for specific job titles. The ranges and averages are derived from the salaries entered for that job title over the past year, and segmented by location and company. This allows customized comparisons for the same role across different cities or employers.
For example, the reported average base salary for a software engineer in Los Angeles is $114,163 per year, compared to $105,570 in Chicago. Facebook’s average software engineering salary is $152,704, higher than the average of $121,440 at Google.
Glassdoor also applies cost of living adjustments between metro areas. So while the raw average salary for software engineers in San Francisco is higher than Chicago, Glassdoor’s adjusted comparison shows Chicago pay is equivalent after accounting for the local costs in San Francisco.
In addition to user-contributed salary info, Glassdoor generates customized salary ranges using its Know Your Worth tool. Users enter details about their education, experience and skills, and Glassdoor provides an estimated salary range tailored to that specific user.
Pros and Cons of Glassdoor Data
Here are some key advantages and limitations to consider regarding Glassdoor salary data:
Pros:
- Massive volume of real salary data points
- Easy to filter, compare and analyze salaries for specific roles and locations
- Aggregated ranges and averages offer more insight than individual data points
- Cost of living adjustments enhance localized accuracy
Cons:
- No verification of user-submitted data
- Potential selection bias in data samples
- Sample sizes vary significantly by job and location
- Timeliness depends on user contribution frequency
In summary, Glassdoor offers access to an immense database of real-world salaries to enable localized comparisons, but the accuracy of the unverified data does have limitations.
PayScale’s Methodology
Unlike Glassdoor, PayScale uses a dual approach of collecting both crowdsourced and employer-provided salary data. This combination aims to deliver increased accuracy through validation and modeling.
On the crowdsourcing side, PayScale’s database includes over 54 million salary profiles. These are entered by employees via online survey. The profiles contain detailed information about compensation beyond just base salary, including bonuses, profit sharing, commissions, and benefits.
In addition to user-submitted profiles, PayScale partners directly with medium and large employers to collect salary data. This employer-sourced data enhances accuracy with actual compensation numbers beyond estimated user submissions.
PayScale combines the crowdsourced and employer-submitted data sets. Their data science team then leverages proprietary algorithms to identify anomalies and model the most accurate salary ranges. This modeling accounts for variables like job type, experience level, education, location, and other compensation factors.
The aggregated salary data is available in PayScale’s free online tools like the salary calculator and comparison tool. For customized reports, users must complete their own salary profile with information about their job, skills, education and demographics. PayScale uses this to generate a tailored salary range based on how user attributes compare with PayScale’s full data set.
Benefits and Limitations of PayScale
Here are some key strengths and weaknesses of PayScale’s methodology:
Pros:
- Combines crowdsourced and employer salary data
- Advanced modeling improves accuracy
- Customized salary estimates based on user attributes
- Wealth of compensation data beyond base salary
Cons:
- Partial dependence on unverified crowdsourced data
- Self-reported salaries may still contain bias
- Limited transparency into proprietary statistical modeling
- Profile required for personalized salary estimates
In summary, PayScale delivers robust salary data modeling, but user-submitted data accuracy remains an inherent limitation.
Salary.com Compensation Data Sources
Unlike Glassdoor and PayScale, Salary.com does not rely on crowdsourced salary submissions as its primary data source. Instead, Salary.com focuses on employer-reported compensation data and job posting compensation.
Salary.com conducts direct market salary surveys of employers across industries. Participating companies submit detailed compensation information for positions in their organization. This includes base pay, bonuses, benefits, commissions, and other forms of remuneration.
In return for participating in the surveys, employers receive access to Salary.com’s full database for compensation benchmarking and analytics. The crowdsourced data provides a salary normalization resource to compare across regions, industries, and skill levels.
In addition to surveys, Salary.com acquires data through aggregating and analyzing actual job posting compensation. This includes salary ranges and compensations packaged advertised directly by companies seeking to fill open positions.
Salary.com combines the market survey data and job posting information to generate various salary averages and percentiles. Licensed users can access the data through Salary.com’s online tools and integrations. These display normalized salary ranges scaled to specific locations and industries.
Positives and Drawbacks of Salary.com
Here are some notable advantages and disadvantages of Salary.com’s employer-focused data sources:
Pros:
- Direct from-the-source data from employers
- Robust compensation package details beyond base salary
- Benchmarking and normalization across locations and industries
- Timely insights from real-time job postings
Cons:
- Relies on employer participation in surveys
- Data skewed toward participating industries
- Lacks transparency into survey and modeling methodology
- Job posting salaries may reflect aspirational ranges
In summary, Salary.com provides authoritative salary data directly from employers, but potential data gaps exist across industries.
How the Bureau of Labor Statistics Tracks Wages
Unlike the sample-based crowdsourcing of Payscale and Glassdoor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) takes a broad, empirical approach to collecting nationwide salary data across all sectors of the economy.
The primary BLS resource for wage data is the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. This program conducts a broad survey of non-farm businesses across the country to gather wage and employment data across 800+ occupational classifications.
Rather than using samples of self-selected individuals or companies, the OEWS survey randomly selects 1.2 million business establishments to participate. This randomized sampling aims to eliminate selection bias and gather statistically representative national wage data.
The comprehensive dataset is compiled annually and includes cross-sections of wage percentiles, averages, and medians segmented by occupation, industry, geography, and other attributes. Adjustments are applied to the raw survey data to account for outliers and normalize across occupations and locations.
In addition to the OEWS estimates, the BLS National Compensation Survey provides detailed analysis of employer labor costs. This data includes the cost of benefits, compensation policies, retirement plans, and bonus prevalence in addition to base wages.
The BLS makes all survey data available for free online through its Occupational Outlook Handbook and downloadable data sets. The OOH web tool allows customized queries for national salary averages specific occupations and states.
What Makes BLS Wage Data Unique
Below are some of the notable advantages and limitations of the BLS wage data resources:
Pros:
- Randomized, unbiased survey sampling
- Empirical data across all occupations and geographies
- Scientifically normalized compensation estimates
- Detailed breakdowns of employment costs and benefits
Cons:
- Lacks granularity of crowdsourced salary sites
- Data may lag real-time shifts in compensation
- Survey-based rather than from direct employers
- Annual rather than continually updated
In summary, the BLS provides authoritative consensus data on occupation salaries, but lags crowdsourced sites in currency and employer specificity.
Best Practices for Using Salary Sites
While all the major salary websites provide valuable compensation data, keep these tips in mind when using them for job research or career planning:
- Check multiple sites to cross-validate salary ranges for a given role
- Focus on median or midpoint salaries rather than inflated averages
- Use aggregate salary data as a guideline, not a guarantee for offers
- Account for personalized factors like skills, experience level, and education
- Consider customizing searches by company, industry, or metro area
- Factor in the comprehensiveness of the total compensation package
- Look at salary growth trends over time, not just current data
While online salary data empowers informed compensation discussions, remember that actual offers depend on the hiring company, specific job requirements, interview performance, and negotiating tactics. Use aggregated salary sites for guidance, but combine with careful individual exploration of roles and employers of interest.
The Bottom Line
In today’s data-driven era, online salary resources provide unprecedented public access to pay range insights across companies, occupations, and locations. Crowdsourced sites like Glassdoor and PayScale offer salary transparency through sheer volume of data points, while employer-focused sites like Salary.com distill survey and job posting salary figures.
Meanwhile, government wage data through the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivers scientifically-backed compensation estimates across all professions. Each salary source provides unique advantages, but no website can provide a 100% guarantee of actual job offer compensation.
When leveraged carefully alongside thoughtful career planning, however, leading salary websites help provide an accurate picture of typical pay ranges. This allows informed salary expectations and empowered compensation discussions during your job search and career growth.