Data-driven research for smarter compensation
Browse proprietary research and meaningful facts from our data science and editorial teams. Discover thought leadership on compensation data and pay best practices.
Explore All Topics →Payscale’s 11th Annual Salary Budget Survey
Access data cuts across 1,266 organizations broken down by industry, company size, and employee type.
Featured content
Navigating the Compensation Cosmos
Welcome aboard, Captain. This is your command center for navigating compensation — benchmarking pay with market data, building compliant job descriptions, and planning salary budgets with confidence. Explore guides, tools, and on-demand sessions from Payscale to chart your team's course forward.
How to pay for emerging AI skills before your market data falls behind
Pay transparency is raising expectations for how organizations explain pay decisions, but transparency itself is not the challenge. The real challenge is whether employees, managers, and leaders understand how pay works.
How to defend your compensation and total rewards budget to finance
Pay transparency is raising expectations for how organizations explain pay decisions, but transparency itself is not the challenge. The real challenge is whether employees, managers, and leaders understand how pay works.
How to align talent acquisition and compensation before hiring decisions break down
Pay transparency is raising expectations for how organizations explain pay decisions, but transparency itself is not the challenge. The real challenge is whether employees, managers, and leaders understand how pay works.
Winning CFO Approval for Your Compensation Budget
The best compensation strategy in the world means nothing if it never gets funded. Getting to "yes" isn't about having more data—it's about telling a story your CFO can act on. The most effective compensation leaders translate market benchmarks and pay models into a language finance understands: business impact, quantified risk, and measurable return. This guide shows you how to move from analysis to approval. You'll learn what CFOs actually want to hear (and the pitfalls that quietly sink good proposals), how to frame merit increases, market adjustments, pay equity, and retention as strategic investments rather than rising costs, and how to answer the hard questions with confidence backed by trusted data. Because the goal was never just to build the right strategy. It was to get the budget to make it real.
Effective pay increase strategies to retain talent mid-cycle
Delayed offers cause team burnout and talent loss, with the core issue often being compensation misalignment rather than speed. This guide addresses the hidden expenses of misalignment and provides four foundations to transform hiring from chaotic to strategic
How to plan salary budgets in an unpredictable labor market
Learn how compensation teams are adapting job pricing strategies using AI-assisted matching, skills insights, and unified market data workflows. Join Payscale’s live webinar on modern compensation benchmarking.
Salary Budget Survey (SBS) 2026-2027
The 2026-2027 Salary Budget Survey (SBS) from Payscale provides comp-reported survey data on what organizations are planning for pay increases in 2027 in the United States, Canada, and select international locations.
How to prevent offer and pay alignment issues that create hiring delays
Delayed offers cause team burnout and talent loss, with the core issue often being compensation misalignment rather than speed. This guide addresses the hidden expenses of misalignment and provides four foundations to transform hiring from chaotic to strategic
Your Guide to Salary Budget Planning for 2027
Compensation teams often struggle to allocate limited budgets effectively due to a lack of data and visibility, leading to inefficient pay planning. This guide provides a strategic, four-step framework utilizing data from the Payscale 2026-2027 Salary Budget Survey to optimize pay planning year-round, determine accurate budgets, evaluate critical metrics, and move away from flat, "peanut butter" increases. For more information, read the guide at Payscale.
2026 Compensation Best Practices for Finance & Insurance
Explore the latest compensation trends shaping Finance & Insurance, including AI-driven workforce changes, market pricing, pay equity, executive reporting, and the growing need for more consistent, defensible pay decisions.
2026 Compensation Best Practices for Healthcare, and Social Assistance
See how Healthcare organizations are navigating retention pressure, pay fairness, compression, critical-role pricing, and constrained budgets, along with the compensation practices helping leaders respond.
Pay conversations, freshly brewed
HR and comp leaders are under pressure: tighter budgets, new transparency laws, and rising expectations from every direction. Our podcast brings you expert insights so you can step into every pay conversation with clarity, confidence, and a plan.
Want to join us on the mic?
Let’s talk: coffee@payscale.com
Want to join us on the mic?
Let’s talk: coffee@payscale.com