How we
calculate.

Sources

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2024. A federal survey of employers. For each job in each metro and rural area, BLS publishes the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th and 90th percentile annual wage. We use 852 occupations across 530 areas. bls.gov/oes

2. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification, LCA disclosure data, FY2026 Q3. When employers hire on H-1B and similar visas they must file the wage they’ll pay for each position. We keep certified, full-time filings (393,062 wages), convert hourly/weekly pay to yearly, and merge employer name variants by federal employer ID. dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor

How your percentile is calculated

Market verdict: we place your pay among the five BLS percentile points for your job and metro, interpolating on a log scale between them. Below the 10th or above the 90th percentile we only say “more than 90%”, because BLS doesn’t publish finer detail. If BLS has no figure for your metro we fall back to your state, then the U.S., and say so.

Employer verdict: if your employer reported 5+ salaries for your job, we rank your pay against those exact filings (your metro first, then state, then U.S.).

Target number (Dossier): the 75th percentile of your group, rounded to $1,000. If you’re already above it, the 90th. For job offers we suggest countering about 5% above the target.

How this differs from salary-sharing sites

Sites like Glassdoor, Levels.fyi and Payscale mostly collect salaries that people choose to post. That data is useful, but it skews toward people who recently changed jobs or feel underpaid, and entries can be years old. Outpaid uses only government sources: an employer survey (BLS) and wages employers filed with the Department of Labor. The trade-offs: base pay only, and BLS data lags about a year.

Privacy

All ranking happens in your browser. Your salary is never sent to our server or to Stripe. The re-open link keeps it after the “#”, which browsers don’t transmit.

Limits

These are base wages, not bonus or equity. BLS figures are from May 2024 and lag current pay. Employer filings skew toward companies that hire on work visas. Data may contain errors. Not legal, financial or career advice.