Determining the average salary increase of my clients

I specialize in salary negotiations, and my clients see their salaries increase by an average of $11,500 USD. I updated this metric by shifting the date range, and now my 2025 and 2026 numbers are included.

I've always had a difficult time reconciling the average salary increase with the story it tells, especially when considering different markets, industries, geographic regions, and even the year when the data was gathered.

For a tech professional in San Francisco, an average salary increase can look wildly different from a scientist in Research Triangle Park. And when you take into consideration my Canadian and European job seekers with their compensation landscapes, you can see how difficult it is to create a meaningful metric from the data.

Another layer to this metric is the split taking place among professionals due to the growing gap in our arguably K-shaped economy. For job seekers in professions where AI is democratizing their hard-earned skill set, their salary increases are looking very different from those in increasingly seniorized professions.

If it feels like you're wearing more and more hats in your job due to AI, you could be part of that seniorized group, and if so, your new compensation ceiling might be very surprising.

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