The following is a guest post by Raine Parker, who writes about online accounting degree programs. I like this post because it gives resources that tie in nicely to point #4 in my post titled How to Demonstrate that You Deserve a Raise.
We'd all like surprise salary increases and monthly bonuses, but the truth is, our experience, education and work ethic contribute only so much to our employers' bottom line. If you'd like a raise, you're going to have to argue your case effectively, being prepared to cite statistics and compare your job level to similar positions in your area. Keep reading for the best tools to help you analyze your salary and find out how much you're really worth, professionally speaking.
- Salary.com: Salary.com is one of the most popular salary tools on the web. For personal use, you can type in your job position or description and zip code, select your experience level, and access a free base salary report. Salary.com also offers an education analytics tool, which compares your education level with others in your field.
- SalaryExpert: Here is another salary calculator that relies on job title and zip code to evaluate your potential earnings. You'll also find a cost of living calculator and executive salary calculator on the site.
- New York Times Salary Comparison and Salary Calculator: Use the NYT's tool by selecting a job category and a zip code or metropolitan area. Results include a listing of job titles within the job category and are similar to Salary.com's reports.
- Cost of living calculator: Find out what you would need to make in a different city in order to retain your current lifestyle. Powered by CNNMoney.com, this tool will show you the price difference of housing, utilities, transportation, groceries and health care between two cities.
- BLR Salary Search: BLR offers a salary search tool for employees and job seekers and one for employers and human resources professionals. Each features free reports once you select your field, job title and state, and enter your email address.
- PayScale: PayScale is another popular salary research tool that also helps you analyze raises and job offers. You can also compare current and projected salary information.
- How Much Should You Charge for Your Services?: NOLO's feature walks independent contractors through the process of figuring out what to charge for their services, taking into consideration travel expenses, profit margin, business insurance, postage costs, accounting fees and more.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: BLS.gov publishes web guides for all sorts of industries and professions, including expected education levels and salary potential. Keep in mind some of the information is outdated but should be reconfigured after the census reports.
Glassdoor.com is a good one for me. They collect reports of salaries from individuals. If you work at a large company then your peers may have submitted their salaries so you can do a good apples to apples to find out how you're being paid compared to other people at your job.
Most of the salary websites don't recognize my job title so I get lumped into some other job that isn't really close to what I do. So they give me bad data.
Posted by: jim | March 05, 2010 at 01:12 PM
These are great links to find out your salary. I can also recommend if you work in a large corporation, they may have averages there in the HR dept which you can also use, especially if you're asking for a raise!
Posted by: James | March 05, 2010 at 03:34 PM
I like all tool, but the most liked tool of mine is cost and living calculator, it helped me in budgeting my monthly income.
Posted by: Ronald E. Barron | March 08, 2010 at 03:48 AM
Hate to break it to you guys, I do enjoy freemoney's finance posts but he/she has made a few errors in many of his/her posts including his or her rants about "cost of living". I'll explain why at a later time.
Posted by: Factcheck | March 22, 2010 at 01:22 PM
Factcheck --
I hate to break it to you, but this is a guest post (not written by me.)
Posted by: FMF | March 22, 2010 at 01:33 PM