See if your salary growth is keeping pace with inflation and market norms — or falling behind.
Is your pay actually keeping up?
Where your salary could be under different growth rates
A 3% annual raise feels like progress until you realize inflation often runs close to that same rate — meaning your real purchasing power barely moved, or even declined. Nominal salary growth and real (inflation-adjusted) growth tell very different stories.
Research consistently shows that switching employers produces significantly higher salary growth than staying and waiting for internal raises — often the gap between job-hoppers and loyal employees compounds into tens of thousands of dollars over a decade.
Market rate matters more than your personal raise history. If your skills and experience now command a higher market salary than what you're earning, that gap represents money left on the table regardless of how many raises you've received along the way.