How to Find Salaries

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By Lija Rasa
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U.S. Department of Labor collects salary data.

Whether you are trying to find a salary range for a career you are thinking of pursuing or need to negotiate your salary when accepting that new job offer, it pays to do the research. Even if you are in an unpleasant situation of having to sue someone, you might be able to find out what their salary is without having to hire a private investigator.

Here are some tips that might help you when researching salaries.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Step 1

Visit careeronestop.org - there you can find salaries data collected by the U.S. Department of Labor as well as lots of other useful info to help in job search, career counseling, retraining, etc.
Step 2

Visit salary.com - they offer salary range data for free and a personalized report for a fee. Don't rush into paying a fee though, only do it if you think you absolutely need to know what salary you can ask for when negotiating a job offer. Otherwise, knowing the salary range might suffice. There are other sites that offer similar services - try out everything they offer for free first.
Step 3

Search job listings for jobs similar to the ones you are interested in finding out about salaries. You will often see a salary range listed with the job description.
Step 4

Look for forums dedicated to specific careers. You can find those at job search sites like monster.com or the websites of professional societies. You can always make a post on the forums asking about what's the usual pay for that type of a job in your area and your experience level.
Step 5

If you are interested in finding out public employee salaries - you should know that those have to be disclosed to the public by law. This includes the employees of state and local governments, public universities, even White House staff, etc. Search for the public salary records online. Beware that those records should be available for free, but there are plenty of sites that will offer to sell you access to the databases.
Step 6

To find public university employee salaries, go to the university website, and you should be able to look up exactly how much each employee is making. If you can't find the data, call the human resources department, and they will tell you where to look.
Step 7

If you are having trouble while trying to find government employee salaries, visit your local library and ask a librarian for help. The records are all out there, even though they are not always easy to find.