National Compensation Forecast October 2025
SE - NCF October 2025

Inside This White Paper

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Introduction
Each quarter, ERI SalaryExpert examines the rates at which compensation has increased and provides guidance on expected increases for the upcoming year. These rates are calculated using ERI SalaryExpert's Salary Assessor and ERI SalaryExpert’s Salary Increase Survey & Forecast. In the context of this paper, the results represent actual growth reported in ERI SalaryExpert’s Salary Assessor over periods ranging from one quarter to twenty years.
Overall Trends in Compensation

October salary growth (0.48%) is down from the July 1 data release (0.57%), which is lower than the predicted quarterly rate of 0.69%. Growth over the past year has been 2.27%, with an average quarterly growth of 0.57%. To
put this into context, the average quarterly growth over the past 20 years has been 0.71%.

Overall Trends by Year

An examination of where the salary movement has departed from the expected trend gives us information regarding how salaries might move in the future. Specifically, 2014 through 2020 saw actual salaries grow at a rate that was within the range of expected growth, with higher growth starting in 2021 and peaking in 2022. Compensation growth has slowed since that peak. 

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Compensation Data from SalaryExpert

We have salary information and cost of living data for thousands of job titles and locations around the world.
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About SalaryExpert

SalaryExpert, powered by ERI, was launched in 2000 with a mission to provide employers, human resource professionals, and job seekers with compensation data. Backed by over 35 years of verified and reliable salary data, SalaryExpert draws on ERI’s expertise in salary and cost of living data to provide the public with excellent tools for evaluating career, relocation, compensation, and education decisions. We want to make your compensation planning and career evaluation easier with access to salary survey data for more than 10,500+ locations, 1,100+ industries, and 39,600+ jobs including 1,800+ executive positions.
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Our Process

Data are gathered from 3 sources: surveys we conduct, surveys purchased from other organizations, and reports from publicly traded organizations.

SalaryExpert conducts advanced analytics to accurately capture the market value of each occupation in our salary survey database

Explore SalaryExpert’s wage, salary, and compensation databases of over 11,000 job titles, 1,100 industries, and 8,500 locations.

After compiling the data, we conduct QA to ensure data are of the highest quality.

SalaryExpert analysts double-check the results for each job every quarter.

Data Collection

Data are gathered from 3 sources: surveys we conduct, surveys purchased from other organizations, and reports from publicly traded organizations.

Data Verification

After compiling the data, we conduct QA to ensure data is vetted, verefied, and of the highest quality.

Analysis

SalaryExpert conducts advanced analytics to accurately capture the full scope of each occupation in our salary survey database.

Quality Assurance

SalaryExpert analysts double-check the results for each job every quarter. Our verified salary survey information helps set the benchmark pay.

SalaryExpert Results

Explore SalaryExpert’s wage, salary, and compensation databases of over 11,000 job titles, 1,100 industries, and 8,500 locations.