Average Earnings Increase?
 

How have your earnings increased, on average, throughout your career?

More curious about annual merit increases/promotions - not career, company, or job changes.

For those who are not math inclined...

Proper way to calculate:

Current salary = (starting salary) x (average raise)^(number of years)
or
c = s*a^n

c, s, and n should be known. You can use solver in excel or another method to solve for a.

<object style="display: none;" id="__symantecPKIClientMessenger" data-install-updates-user-configuration="true" data-supports-flavor-configuration="true" data-extension-version="0.5.0.161"></object>

Over 12 years, mine has averaged out to 3% a year.

Self employed.

Soooo...no increase?

Nope. I'm an asshole boss.

That sucks. You should totally quit. Show yourself who's the boss.

I got a 4% raise last year and expect about the same this year. That was the first raise in about 8 years. Got to love working for companies who have record years but since they did not hit the numbers set by the board at the beginning of the year there are no bonuses or raises. I am sure the stockholders still got a nice dividend though. :rolleyes:

Weird to calculate mine I usually either got a promotion or switched jobs instead of raises.
There were a couple of years where I got like 2-3.5% raise and a couple of years where I didn't get a raise.

Why settle for a raise when you can name your price with a new company?
I think I've settled now as I'm at that point where I don't want any extra responsibility but love the pay & benefits.

FWIW: I've been working in I/T since 2001.

Annual type cost of living raises? I picked 3%

This.

Speaking not for myself but just generally, you should hope/expect to get a raise every year so you at least keep up with inflation. Over the last many years (like 15+) that is more or less a 2-3% raise. Raises beyond that are TRUE raises, meaning that your purchasing power is actually increased beyond what is needed to keep up with inflation.

In other words -- a "raise" of less than 2% is really a pay cut, in real purchasing power terms. A raise of 2-3% is just keeping you where you are. A raise of more than that is a real raise.

Hope this helps.

Considering your statement about "not math inclined," I'm amused that 1) your formula isn't correct (a should be 1 + a) and 2) you could have solved for "a" yourself to try and make it easier on people.

a = n√(c/s) - 1

Mine works out to about 7% per year.

On some calculators may be easier to do it like this:

a = (c/s)^(1/n) - 1

We average about 3% per year.

I made 30% less in 2016 than 2015. In 2015 I made 70% more than 2014. So far, 2017 is going well.