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The Best Websites for Salary Comparison

During a career change or promotion, salary comparison websites become an important part of job searching.

Employers around the globe have been struggling to fill in job roles as 38 percent of them report an incapability to staff open positions. Negotiating salary offers is a contributing factor to this dilemma. Failure to negotiate a good salary deal can lead to lower job retention for the employee and the company.

Salary research is crucial to finding a job that is right for you. Researching your salary is an essential part of finding out what your skills and experience are worth in the marketplace. Fortunately, there are websites dedicated to creating a salary guide for several careers. Continue reading the sections below to discover the best resources for salary comparison.

Salary.com

Their cost of living calculator, several comparison tools and salary paycheck calculator provides ample information for salary research. This salary guide website lists every position in a career field and provides free salary information. The website has a job comparison feature and you can find information for the same profession at different experience tiers.

Salary.com provides average salaries that can be compared by location and offers job listings. The salary finder tool has a variety of options to discover the specific salary amount. There is also a career searching option for those individuals who have just graduated from college and are looking for their first job. A list of benefits, tips for negotiating salary offers, and articles for college students are provided on the website.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor is typically used to find reviews on companies and read employee feedback. When you are searching for a salary comparison, you will find data for certain jobs at specific companies.  Unlike the previous website, it does not have a cost of living calculator. It is best to use this website for searching salaries of specific companies that you are already interested in since Glassdoor does not provide detailed estimations.

However, they do provide national average salaries for specific careers. Due to Glassdoor acting as a public forum, information such as salary comparison, employee benefits, and even interview questions are shared by employees. Additionally, this job recruiting website is useful for finding information when you are new to the company.  

PayScale

This salary research website is also a great resource for new college graduates. Similarly to Salary.com, PayScale provides free salary calculations, showing career experience, education, skill set, and other factors. In order to receive the free report, they will ask you to make an account with them. After inputting all the proper information, the salary paycheck calculator will provide the average salaries or average hourly pay for the profession based on your current location.

PayScale also doubles as a career helper website for college graduates, from giving tips for negotiating a salary to choosing the best school in your area.  Furthermore, the website provides a college salary report with expectant salaries for specific majors. The college salary report ranks the best colleges based on the salary potential and organizes the colleges by state. PayScale also gives college information for schools that have an associate’s and a bachelor’s degree program.

Indeed

This website is renowned as a job aggregator, but it has a salary comparison feature. This tool does not provide the most detailed salary report, but the information on these salaries has been thoroughly researched. Indeed has about 50 million job listings from original sources. When the salary finder displays its reports, Indeed shows the number of sources they have used come up with average national salaries in their reports. Alongside the number of sources, the website also displays the range of time since the information was posted.

Indeed, like the websites mentioned previously, they will show a list of salaries or hourly pay categorized by city and users can make their pay comparison based on the local area. This is a great tool if you want to move to another city but are unclear on the local pay for the profession.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) for the Bureau of Labor Statistics can be a useful salary finder, especially if you are researching average salaries of a specific profession. You can search for career information by field. If you are searching for more detailed information, the OOH can provide answers to many of your questions. The OOH displays information for yearly median pay, level of education, work experience, projected number of new jobs and the job growth rate.

When you first search the profession, you will be shown the median salaries and a brief overview of the professional details for the career path. Once you click on the profession for more information, there are several tabs giving detailed information on the various aspects of the job. The “pay” tab will show the average pay from the previous year. The salary guide will also display average pay according to top fields for the profession.  

Salary Expert

The salary research is performed by the Economic Research Institute (ERI). The data from ERI comes from a verified team of researchers. The website uses a cost of the living calculator with a global reach for over 45,108 roles in 69 countries. Salary Expert is a great tool for those who want to relocate outside of their home country. Salary Expert shows the calculation of average salaries in a variety of currencies.

This website uses different types of ratings for salary comparison and the cost of living. Their salary paycheck calculator provides detailed salary reports, demonstrating comparisons between your current base salary and the market rate salary, bonuses and total compensation. They also provide a pie chart with a common level of education for other professionals in the same city.  

Like Salary.com, the cost of living calculator will show you what salary you would need to earn in order to maintain your current standard of living. Percentages that compare the cost of living between cities, affordability breakdown graphs and crime overview comparisons are also features of Salary Expert cost of living index.