About Us

What This Tool Does

The Raise Calculator is a free, browser-based tool that generates a personalized raise recommendation for any full-time or hourly worker, anywhere in the world. You enter your country, industry, location type, current pay, experience level, and a handful of merit criteria. The calculator returns three raise targets — a conservative ask, a target ask, and an aggressive ask — along with a negotiation script you can use in a real conversation with your manager.

The tool runs entirely in your browser. No data you enter is stored, transmitted, or retained in any form. There is no account, no login, and no backend server processing your inputs. Everything is computed locally using a pre-loaded dataset and a deterministic calculation engine.

We built it for retail workers, baristas, warehouse staff, nurses, engineers, and everyone in between — because the need for fair pay is universal, even when the data systems that track it are not.

The Three-Layer Calculation Model

Our calculation engine uses three sequential layers to produce a raise target that is both market-grounded and personally calibrated.

Layer 1: Market Parity Pay

We start with the base group median — the typical annual compensation for your occupational category in USD (sourced from BLS OEWS, ILO ILOSTAT, and equivalent national authorities). This baseline is multiplied by four factors: your country's World Bank PPP coefficient, a location-tier multiplier (metropolitan, mid-sized city, or rural), a business-size adjustment, and an experience-level modifier. The result is the market parity pay figure — what workers like you, in your region and context, typically earn.

Layer 2: Market Gap

We calculate the gap between your current annual pay and the market parity figure. If you're already at or above parity, this gap is zero — but your merit layer still applies. If you're below parity, the gap represents the compensation catch-up that forms part of your raise target.

Layer 3: Merit and Inflation

On top of the gap, we apply a merit and inflation layer derived from your country's published wage inflation floor and your checklist inputs. Training new staff adds 6%. Taking on extra operational duties (keys, inventory, opening/closing) adds 6%. Consistent reliable attendance adds 5%. Not having received a raise in over 12 months adds 4%. These percentages are applied to your current pay, not the market parity figure — meaning they reward your personal track record, not just where the market sits.

Data Sources and Coverage

The calculator covers 32 countries across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. Data is organized in a three-tier hierarchy based on the precision and availability of official labor statistics:

• Tier 1 — High-Precision Local Government Data: United States (BLS OEWS), Canada (Job Bank), United Kingdom (ONS ASHE), Australia (ABS), New Zealand (Stats NZ), Germany (Destatis), France (INSEE). These agencies publish annual or quarterly occupational wage statistics at the national and regional level with high methodological rigor.
• Tier 2 — National Ministry of Labour Averages: India (NCS), Indonesia (BPS), Hong Kong (CenstatD), Brazil (IBGE), South Africa (Stats SA), Mexico (INEGI), Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and others. Data quality and granularity vary but national-level wage medians are available from official sources.
• Tier 3 — ILO/OECD Global Registry: All remaining countries fall back to the ILO ILOSTAT Global Wage Report and the OECD Employment Outlook database, which cover 190+ economies with standardized methodology.

PPP conversion factors are drawn from the World Bank International Comparison Program (ICP), updated annually. Inflation floors are sourced from ILO wage trend data and national central bank publications.

What This Tool Is Not

The Raise Calculator is not a financial advisor, an employment attorney, or a substitute for professional compensation consulting. The output is an evidence-informed estimate intended to inform a negotiation conversation — not a guarantee of what your employer will accept, what your role is legally entitled to, or what an external market survey would return.

Salary data ages quickly. Market conditions shift with economic cycles, industry disruptions, and geopolitical events. We update our base dataset annually, but a rapidly changing job market — such as occurred in technology in 2022–2024 — may cause the tool's benchmarks to lag real-time conditions.

Use our output as a starting point for a well-prepared conversation, not as a final authority. Pair it with your own research: check open job postings, speak with peers in your industry, and review any published pay bands your employer may have shared.

Our Values

We believe pay transparency is a public good. When workers understand what comparable roles pay, the entire labor market becomes more efficient and more equitable. Opaque compensation practices disproportionately harm workers who are newer to the workforce, less confident in negotiation, or belong to groups that have historically faced wage discrimination.

This tool is free and always will be. It is supported by contextual advertising, which means some pages may display ads served by Google AdSense. Ads are clearly labeled and do not influence the calculator's methodology, data sources, or output in any way.

If you have feedback on our methodology, a data discrepancy to report, or a suggestion for expanding country coverage, we welcome it. Use the contact page to reach us.