You just go out and buy the information. It's not really available to individuals.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/equifax-h...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a lot of data, not that granular but by region and larger city it is very good: https://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm

Equifax will sell you an individual's data. Like "this guy with this social security number had this yearly salary".

Think about all the times you've told a recruiter/hiring manager your previous salary (don't, btw). Think about the HR teams and such at your company that have access.

Shrewd people can get this data, especially if they're willing to pay for it.

Most people I know just lie and add 20+ percent. If you are moving to a different market...they add 50 percent of the real salary.

There are market research firms that specialize in this area. It's useful to have such information, so it has monetary value - money presumably saved by underpaying or avoiding overpaying your workers. It's not something the average employee would afford in money and effort to research.

It's a good question how the data is obtained. Maybe through mutual data sharing agreements in exchange for access? Anyway, I've see such reports for my country, with very detailed breakdowns for job types, seniority, broad technology area, forecasts etc.

Companies use information services in order to pay appropriately. They neither want to overcompensate and drive higher wages nor do they want to under compensate and lose staff to competitors.

You can get pretty reasonable numbers, especially in the software industry, just using the freely available H1B visa salary data. All employers using these visas have to disclose the title, salary and location for an employee hired on one. In my experience for companies I'm familiar with these numbers are usually pretty accurate.

> https://h1bdata.info

Thanks so much, this is the career advice database I have been looking for for years. Whenever people ask me what they should do when they graduate, I have to base my response on broad government surveys that, for example, lump every single natural science in to a single salary category. With this, I can even make charts.

There are companies out there who organize salary surveys.

Every company pays in a bit to cover the costs/overhead with putting together a market report, and also submit the job titles and salaries of their workers. Possibly more data too, but I'm not certain. E.g. time with the company or years of relevant experience would be very handy.

Check out imercer.com. Depending on how you look at it it may start to look like a a middleman for cartels.