Where the pay numbers come from.

The typical-pay range you see in the calculator is an estimate for your matched occupation in your area, built from public occupational and labor-market data, including data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program and live job-posting signals.

Occupation matching uses the O*NET taxonomy. We always show you which occupation your role matched, and you can correct it, because a range for the wrong job is worse than no range at all.

The rules we hold ourselves to

1. 01If the data for your role and area is thin, you see no number. We say so plainly instead of widening an estimate until it looks confident.
2. 02Ranges are base-pay figures. They can understate total compensation, especially where bonuses or equity are common, and we label them that way.
3. 03We never call you underpaid unless your stated pay sits below a conservative bound of the range, and even then with the base-pay caveat attached.
4. 04We never recommend a role or a move our data does not actually support.
5. 05Your freedom-date math never uses market data. It is arithmetic on the numbers you typed, so it is always yours and always true.

Attribution

This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Ascenza is not endorsed by or affiliated with USDOL/ETA.

Wage statistics include data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which does not endorse this site.

Questions about a specific range? Re-run it with a corrected occupation or write to us; the address is in the footer of every plan email.