Look up the pay for almost any job and you'll see more than one number: a median, sometimes an average, and often a range from a 10th percentile up to a 90th. Most people read the first number and move on. But knowing what these figures actually mean - and why the median usually beats the average - is the difference between an accurate sense of what a job pays and a misleading one.
What a percentile is
A percentile tells you where a value sits in a ranked list. If a job's 25th-percentile wage is $48,000, that means 25% of people in that job earn less than $48,000 and 75% earn more. The 90th percentile is the level only the top 10% of earners exceed. Percentiles slice a workforce into "how many earn below this point," which is far more informative than a single headline figure.
A typical salary report shows five: the 10th, 25th, 50th (the median), 75th, and 90th. Together they describe the whole shape of pay for a job - not just a midpoint, but how far the low end and high end stretch.
Median vs. average: the key difference
The median is the exact middle: line everyone up by pay, and the median is the person in the center. Half earn more, half earn less.
The average (mean) is the total of all salaries divided by the number of people.
They sound similar, but they answer different questions, and they can diverge sharply. The reason is that salary distributions are usually skewed: most people cluster in a normal range, but a small number of very high earners sit far above everyone else. Those outliers drag the average upward, while the median barely moves.
A simple example. Say five people in a role earn $50k, $55k, $60k, $65k, and $200k. The median is $60,000 - the middle value, a fair picture of typical pay. The average is $86,000 - pulled up by the single $200k outlier to a number that four of the five people don't come close to. If you quoted the average, you'd badly overstate what a typical worker in that role makes.
Why the median is the better guide to "typical" pay
Because the median ignores the size of the outliers and just finds the middle, it resists that distortion. In a field with a few very high earners - executives, star specialists, a handful of huge offers - the average says "look how high pay can go," while the median says "here's what a normal person in this job actually earns." For judging whether an offer is fair, or what you can realistically expect, the median is almost always the number you want. That's why salary figures on this site lead with the median.
How to read the full range
The single number, even the median, still hides useful information. The 10th-to-90th percentile range tells you how much pay varies in a role, which matters as much as the midpoint:
- A narrow range (10th and 90th close together) means pay is fairly standardized - experience and employer don't move it much.
- A wide range means there's big upside (and downside) - the same job title can pay very differently depending on skills, seniority, employer, and location.
Where you fall in that range depends on your experience and situation. Early career, expect the lower percentiles; with years of experience and leverage, the upper ones become realistic. Reading the spread, not just the midpoint, tells you both what's typical and what's possible.
You can see all of this on our salary pages. Pull up an occupation like registered nurses or software developers and you'll find the full distribution - 10th through 90th percentile - for each metro, so you can place yourself in the range rather than fixate on one figure. And because pay is only half the story, our guide on nominal vs. real wages explains why the same median means different things in different cities.
The takeaway
Percentiles describe the whole shape of pay, not just a midpoint. The median beats the average as a measure of typical earnings because it isn't distorted by a handful of very high earners. And the 10th-to-90th range shows you how much room there is above and below that midpoint. Read all three - median, and the low and high ends - and you'll have a far truer picture of what a job pays than any single number can give you.