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Pay is described in a vocabulary that mixes official statistics with the language employers use in offers. This glossary collects the terms that appear across SalaryBases, from the words used in the US government wage tables to the parts of a job offer that are not salary. Each definition says what the term means in practice and, where the meaning comes from an official publication, which one.
The terms are grouped into three sets: the vocabulary for reading official wage data, the parts of a pay package, and the words used when an offer or a raise is discussed. Where a term has an official definition, the source is named beneath it so you can check it against the original. A figure on this site is either a published statistic with its source, or a model-based estimate that is labelled as an estimate wherever it appears.
The average of all the wages reported for an occupation: the reported wages added together and divided by the number of workers. In an occupation with a few very highly paid people the mean sits above the median, so the two figures can describe the same job differently.
Definition: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: technical notes (May 2025)
See also: Median wage, Wage percentile.
The number of workers the survey counts in an occupation. A figure built on a small count is less reliable, and official tables do not publish estimates that fail their publication standards.
Definition: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: technical notes (May 2025)
See also: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
The wage in the middle of a distribution: half of the workers in the occupation earn more than it and half earn less. Official US wage tables use the annual median as their headline figure, because a small number of very high earners pulls an average upwards.
Definition: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: technical notes (May 2025)
See also: Annual mean wage, Wage percentile.
A survey programme of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that produces wage estimates for about 830 occupations nationally and for smaller areas. It surveys employers rather than workers.
Definition: BLS, OEWS overview
See also: Standard Occupational Classification code, Median wage.
A wage adjusted for inflation so that pay from different years can be compared. A pay rise smaller than the rise in prices is a fall in real terms.
Definition: BLS, Consumer Price Index
See also: Regional price parity, Wage percentile.
A measure of how expensive a place is compared with the national average, published for US states and metro areas by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It is one way of judging what a wage is actually worth where you live.
Definition: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, regional price parities by state and metro area
See also: Real wage, Geographic pay differential.
The six-digit code US federal agencies use to identify an occupation, such as 15-1252 for software developers. It is what makes a figure published by one source directly comparable with a figure published by another.
Definition: BLS, Standard Occupational Classification
See also: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Workers who receive wages or a salary, as opposed to the self-employed. The official US wage estimates on this site cover wage and salary workers in non-farm establishments, so the self-employed are outside them.
Definition: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: technical notes (May 2025)
See also: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
A point in the wage distribution that a given share of workers falls below. The 10th percentile is near the bottom of the range and the 90th percentile near the top, so reading them together shows how wide an occupation's pay range is, not only where the middle sits.
Definition: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics: technical notes (May 2025)
See also: Median wage, Real wage.
The fixed annual amount agreed for a role, before bonus, commission, equity or benefits are added. It is the figure job adverts usually quote, and the one most pay conversations centre on.
See also: Total compensation, Variable pay.
A person's pay divided by the midpoint of the pay band for their role, expressed as a percentage. It is how employers describe, internally, where someone sits inside a range.
See also: Pay band.
What an employer spends on an employee for every hour worked, split between wages and salaries and the cost of benefits such as paid leave, insurance and legally required contributions. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation programme publishes these figures for the United States.
Definition: BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation
See also: Total compensation.
Pay made in company ownership rather than cash, usually as restricted stock units or share options. What it ends up being worth depends on the vesting terms and on the value of the shares when they vest.
See also: Vesting, Total compensation.
A pay adjustment an employer applies because of local market conditions or the cost of living in a place. It is set by the employer; official statistics do not prescribe it.
See also: Regional price parity, Base salary.
The range of pay an employer sets for a role or grade, usually with a minimum, a midpoint and a maximum. A published range says what the employer is prepared to pay; it is not an offer.
See also: Compa-ratio, Base salary.
A one-off payment made for joining, often on condition that it is repaid if the employee leaves within a set period. Because it is paid once, it does not raise the base salary that later percentage rises are calculated from.
See also: Base salary, Total compensation.
Everything of value an employer provides in exchange for the work: base salary, bonuses, commission, equity, pension or retirement contributions, insurance, paid leave and other benefits. Comparing two offers on total compensation rather than base salary alone shows the parts that are also worth money.
See also: Base salary, Employer cost per hour worked.
The part of pay that is not guaranteed from one period to the next: annual bonuses, commission, profit sharing and performance awards. It is normally described with a target, and what is actually paid can be lower or higher.
See also: Base salary, Total compensation.
The schedule over which equity or employer retirement contributions become yours to keep. Before an award vests it can usually be lost by leaving, and the schedule often begins with a waiting period and then instalments over several years.
See also: Equity compensation.
The first number placed on the table in a negotiation, which tends to shape the offers that follow. In published experiments, first offers predicted final outcomes and tended to benefit the side that made them.
See also: Counter-offer.
An offer made in response to another one: an employer trying to keep someone who has resigned, or an employer or a candidate proposing different terms after a first offer.
See also: Anchor.
Definitions attributed above to a government publication follow that publication's own wording and scope. The rest describe ordinary market practice and nothing more: this page is general information, not financial, tax, legal or career advice. The datasets the site uses, and what they include and leave out, are on the data sources and methodology page, and the official figures themselves are in the US wage data section.