Salary Negotiation Brief
Get a data-backed salary negotiation brief — your percentile, the market benchmark for your role, and a specific number to aim for.
Example: A software engineer earning $95,000 who ranks at the 55th percentile nationally, against a market benchmark of $115,000 for their field, has a $20,000 gap to the 75th percentile — a specific, sourced figure to anchor a raise request around, rather than a vague "market rate" claim.
Combines national salary percentile data with market benchmarks by role and field (periodically updated).
Derived figures
- Earnings, hours and minimum wage — derived from ILOSTAT (hours worked, minimum wage); World Bank PIP (income distribution) (Per-country most recent ILOSTAT observation) using Hours worked and minimum wage are ILOSTAT's published figures. The earnings percentiles are NOT published earnings percentiles: they are a lognormal fit to World Bank PIP's median and Gini, which measure per-capita household welfare rather than individual employment earnings, so they sit below a full-time salary for the same country.
How the salary negotiation brief works
Walking into a salary conversation with a specific percentile and market benchmark is generally more persuasive than a vague sense that you're "underpaid." This tool pulls together several data points that are each available individually elsewhere on this site — your national salary percentile, a market salary benchmark for your field, and a working-hours comparison — into a single negotiation-ready brief with a copy-pasteable summary paragraph.
The raise-impact table extends the picture beyond a single number, projecting how a given percentage raise compounds into a meaningfully larger lifetime earnings difference. For the underlying salary benchmark by field on its own, see the Graduate Salary by Degree Field calculator; for your percentile alone without the full brief, see the National Salary Percentile calculator; and if you're negotiating as a contractor or freelancer rather than an employee, see the Freelance Rate Calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- How is the lifetime earnings impact of a raise calculated?
- It scales the model's baseline age/education earnings projection by the raise percentage — an approximation of applying that raise consistently across your remaining working years, not a re-run of the projection against your actual current salary (the underlying model doesn't take salary as an input).
- Can I bring this straight into a review?
- The negotiation summary paragraph is written to be copy-pasteable — it cites your percentile, the market benchmark, the gap, and the raise math in one block.
- What does a salary negotiation brief include?
- Your national salary percentile, a US occupation salary benchmark for your field, the dollar and percentage gap to your country's 75th percentile, a working-hours comparison against national and OECD averages, and the projected lifetime earnings impact of several raise scenarios — combined into one copy-pasteable summary.
- How is the national percentile calculated?
- Your salary is interpolated in log-earnings space against national percentile points, the same methodology used by the standalone National Salary Percentile calculator — see that page for more detail on how the underlying earnings distribution is modelled.
- How should I use this in a negotiation?
- Use the negotiation summary as a starting reference point, not a script — pair the percentile and market benchmark data with your own specific achievements and contributions, since compensation decisions typically weigh individual performance alongside market positioning.
- Can I use this for contractor/freelance rate negotiation?
- This tool is built around employee salary percentiles and occupation benchmarks, so it's a reasonable input for context but not a direct freelance rate calculation — see the Freelance Rate Calculator for a purpose-built day-rate and hourly-rate estimate that accounts for overheads and non-billable time.