Salary Methodology

Data sources

Salary data on Trabajo.org is collected from multiple sources to ensure accuracy and coverage:

• Own job listing data — Salary data extracted from millions of job postings published on our aggregator, sourced from over 2,000 job boards across 91 countries.
• Eurostat — The statistical office of the European Union provides minimum wage, employment, and unemployment data for European countries (EU Open Data License).
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — The U.S. Department of Labor provides detailed wage and employment data by occupation for the United States.
• ILOSTAT — The International Labour Organization provides global labour statistics including wage data for developing economies.
• ESCO & O*NET — European and U.S. occupational classifications providing role descriptions, skills, and education requirements.
• World Bank — Economic indicators such as GDP per capita and population.

Collection and analysis process

1. Collection — Our system processes millions of job listings daily from 91 countries. Minimum salary, maximum salary, currency, and pay period (hourly/monthly/yearly) fields are extracted.
2. Normalization — All salaries are converted to gross annual values. Hourly rates are multiplied by 2,080 hours/year, monthly by 12. Currency conversion is applied when necessary.
3. Classification — Data is grouped by role, city, and country using standard occupational classifications (ESCO/O*NET).
4. Cross-validation — Job listing data is cross-referenced with government sources (Eurostat, BLS, ILOSTAT) to verify salary range consistency.

Outlier removal

To ensure data quality, we apply the interquartile range (IQR) method:

1. Calculate the 25th percentile (Q1) and 75th percentile (Q3) of the salary distribution.
2. Calculate IQR = Q3 - Q1.
3. Remove values below Q1 - 1.5 × IQR and above Q3 + 1.5 × IQR.
4. Exclude suspiciously low salaries (below the country minimum wage) or extremely high values.

This process removes data entry errors and malformatted listings without distorting the actual salary distribution.

Update frequency

Salary data is updated daily. The full process includes:

• Continuous ingestion of new job listings (24/7)
• Daily recalculation of salary statistics (medians, percentiles, ranges)
• Weekly update of government data (Eurostat, BLS, ILOSTAT)
• Quarterly review of occupational classifications

Transparency

We believe in full data transparency:

• Sample size always visible — Every salary data point includes the number of job listings analyzed.
• Sources cited — All data sources are clearly identified (EU Open Data, BLS Public Domain, ILOSTAT CC-BY).
• Ranges, not just averages — We show 25th and 75th percentiles, not just means, to reflect the real salary spread.
• City and sector breakdowns — Data is geographically disaggregated for local relevance.

Limitations

• Salary data is based on published job listings; actual negotiated salaries may differ.
• Not all job postings include salary information; data represents listings with published salary.
• Data is more reliable in countries and roles with higher listing volumes.
• Salaries in sectors with less online presence may be underrepresented.