Indeed's Salary Estimates

I find that Indeed's Salary guesses are really off target. Several have been off the mark by $20K, but one was off by $44,000. Whatever method they're using needs to be reviewed because it's really inaccurate, which makes the job search feature here irrelevant.

Hi GumOnMyShoe,

The figures you see from our Salary search are in fact averages. The Indeed Salary Search is based on an index of salary information extracted from over 50 million job postings from thousands of unique sources over the last 12 months. Many job descriptions don't contain salary information, but there are enough that do to produce statistically significant median salaries for millions of keyword, job title and location combinations.

I hope this helps explain the salary averages you've been seeing. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Indeed Admin

salary.com is another good resource for more specific salary comparisons.

--
The Career Lady
askthecareerlady@gmail.com
askthecareerlady.blogspot.com

GumOnMyShoe in Buffalo Grove, Illinois said: I find that Indeed's Salary guesses are really off target. Several have been off the mark by $20K, but one was off by $44,000. Whatever method they're using needs to be reviewed because it's really inaccurate, which makes the job search feature here irrelevant.

I completely agree! For example, I was looking at the salaries for medical secretaries and for Minneapolis/St.Paul, specifically, Indeed claims that the average is $44,000! That's ridiculous and very misleading. If you go to the Department of Labor, it's more like $30,000. This INDEED.COM) is one of the primary resources that the Dakota County workforce uses and then relays this information to the unemployed. It's deceptive and completely inaccurate.

Hi Seekingtruth,

Here is a salary search that I conducted which you may find helpful:

www.indeed.com/salary?q1=%22medical+secretary%22&l1=saint+paul%2C+mn&tm=1

Notice that I put the exact phrase I was searching for in double quotations and that the box labeled 'Search Job Titles Only' is checked. These tricks will help ensure that only salary data for jobs with "medical secretray" as the title will be returned.

You will also find a blue bar directly underneath the average salary number. When you move your mouse over the bar you can see the level of confidence in the salary estimate and how many data points Indeed has to reference in order to make the estimate.

As you can see this estimate has 'High Confidence' which means that Indeed has used data from over 250 job listings with 'medical secretary' in the title to come up with this estimate.

I hope this has helped you interpret the data you were seeing!

Best,
Indeed Host