Methodology and data
Every number on this site comes from a national statistics office. Here’s exactly which figures we use and how.
How your percentile is worked out
For your age group we take the published salary percentiles (for example, the salary at the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile). Your salary falls between two of them; we place it between them on a logarithmic scale, because pay is spread out more at the top than at the bottom.
If your salary is above the highest published figure (usually the 90th percentile) or below the lowest, we extend the curve using a log-normal shape fitted to the two outermost points. We say so on the result, because positions beyond the published range are estimates.
Gross pay, before tax
All figures are gross: pay before income tax, social insurance and pension contributions. Enter your salary the same way.
What “estimate” means
Results marked Official percentiles use the statistics office’s own figures for your age group. Results marked Estimate from official data combine official figures in a stated way, explained for each country below. We never use figures from surveys of website visitors.
United Kingdom
Source: the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2025, Table 6 (age group), gross annual pay. ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs from HMRC PAYE records.
ONS publishes the 10th, 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, 75th, 80th and 90th percentiles for each age group, separately for full-time employees and for all employees. We use these figures directly. Under-18s are left out because ONS publishes too few percentiles for them.
ASHE covers employees only, not the self-employed, and figures are for the tax year ending April 2025. The 2025 figures are provisional.
Ireland
Sources: the Central Statistics Office’s Detailed Analysis of Earnings Distribution 2023 (percentiles 5 to 95 by age group) and Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources 2025 (median by age group). Both use Revenue records and cover all employments, full-time and part-time.
The CSO’s most recent full spread by age is for 2023. To bring it up to date, we multiply each 2023 percentile by that age group’s growth in median pay between 2023 and 2025. This assumes the shape of the spread stayed the same, so Irish results are marked as estimates.
Figures are per employment, so someone with two jobs appears twice.
United States
Source: the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, 2025 annual averages. We multiply weekly figures by 52.
BLS publishes the median for each age group, but the deciles and quartiles only for all workers aged 25 and over. We estimate each age group’s spread by scaling that all-workers spread to the group’s median. This assumes pay is spread out the same way at every age, which is roughly true but not exact, so US results are marked as estimates.
The self-employed are not included.
Canada
Source: Statistics Canada Table 11-10-0072-01, wages, salaries and commissions of tax filers, tax year 2023. This counts everyone who filed a tax return with employment income, including part-time and part-year workers, which is why medians for the youngest and oldest groups are low.
Statistics Canada publishes the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles by age. We use them directly and extend beyond them with a log-normal curve, so results far from the middle are less precise. The data is for 2023, so it is older than for the other countries.
Australia
Source: the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Employee Earnings, August 2025: weekly earnings in main job of full-time employees. We multiply weekly figures by 52.
ABS publishes the median by age group and the full spread (10th to 90th percentiles) for all ages. As with the US, we estimate each age group’s spread by scaling the all-ages spread to its median, so Australian results are marked as estimates.
Limitations
- Age groups are broad (often ten years), so a 30-year-old and a 39-year-old are compared with the same group.
- Each country measures pay slightly differently, so compare countries with care.
- Percentiles beyond the published range (the top and bottom 10% in most countries) are estimates.
- This is a statistical comparison, not financial or career advice.