Most employees in a large Australian survey had asked their current employer for more pay; far fewer said the request had worked. The economists Benjamin Artz, Amanda Goodall and Andrew Oswald, who analyzed that survey, also found that women asked about as often as men who worked similar hours, but were less likely to report getting a raise.¹ What separates one request from another is the case behind it, the figure and the follow-up.

How to ask for a raise, in short: prepare evidence your manager can check, put a specific figure on the table, and leave with an agreed next step whatever the answer. Pay is one strand of the research on what moves careers forward. The six steps:

1. Learn how pay is set where you work
2. Check what your role pays elsewhere
3. Write down what has changed since your pay was last set
4. Settle on a figure and your own target before you meet
5. Ask in a conversation, then confirm in writing
6. If the answer is no, agree on what would change it

No step can promise a raise. Together they aim to make a request easier to say yes to, and less likely to fail for reasons you could have prepared for.

What a typical raise looks like right now

Ordinary pay rises in the US and Great Britain are running at a few percent a year, and the local figure tells you what your employer is likely to treat as a normal year. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index puts the rise in wages and salaries for civilian workers at 3.2 percent over the year to June 2026.²

Employers are planning for more of the same. Mercer’s July 2026 survey of more than a thousand US organizations found them planning average total increases of 3.5 percent for 2027, counting merit, promotion and cost-of-living raises, and most of those budgets were still preliminary.³ Payscale’s survey of over a thousand organizations, run in May and June 2026, put the average planned US budget at the same level.⁴ Both are company research rather than peer-reviewed studies, and both firms sell pay data and advice to employers. In Great Britain, the Office for National Statistics reports regular pay, excluding bonuses, growing 3.5 percent a year in May to July 2026, or 0.6 percent after inflation.⁵

Why should a national average shape one person’s request? Payscale asks employers for their budget as a share of total payroll and then how it is split across merit, promotion and other increases.⁴ Raises, in other words, come out of a pot. Our reading, not a finding of either survey, is that a request well above the average asks your manager either to take money from elsewhere in that pot or to argue for an exception.

Take a designer who has absorbed a departing colleague’s clients. She is not really asking for a bigger slice of the ordinary budget; she is asking for her pay to match a bigger job, which calls for a different case and possibly a different approval. Before you ask, work out which kind of request yours is, and treat the national figure as a picture of an ordinary year, not as your ceiling or your target.

Further reading

• 

  Negotiation Genius: How to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Brilliant Results at the Bargaining Table and Beyond

  by Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman

  Two Harvard negotiation researchers on preparing your own target, making first offers and handling anchors, the ground this article covers.

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How to ask for a raise in six steps

No trial has tested these steps as a raise method: they draw on a survey, negotiation experiments and pay statistics, so treat them as sensible preparation, not a formula.

1. Learn how pay is set where you work

Put three questions to your manager or HR: when is pay reviewed, who decides, and does your role have a pay range? The annual review is not the only door: most organizations in Mercer’s 2026 survey said they had made, or would make, pay adjustments outside the annual cycle.³ If you can, ask while budgets are still being set, not after they are fixed.

2. Check what your role pays elsewhere

Look at job ads that list pay for similar roles, salary surveys for your field and what recruiters quote. Compare like with like: the same level, a similar employer, the same country or city. A simple list with each figure, where it came from and when is enough to explain your range if asked.

3. Write down what has changed since your pay was last set

A request is easier to grant when it rests on what the employer can see: results with facts attached, responsibilities you have taken on, skills the team now relies on. “Took over two client accounts in March” is something a manager can check; “I have gone above and beyond” is not. The same plain-fact habit helps with being visible at work without bragging. Personal costs such as rent are real, but keep the case about the work, because that is what a manager can repeat to whoever approves the budget.

4. Settle on a figure and your own target before you meet

Choose a specific figure you can explain from steps 2 and 3. Then decide privately the lowest outcome you would accept, and what else would matter to you, such as a title, training or flexibility. Illustration only, with invented US-dollar figures that are not a target or benchmark for any role: similar roles in your city advertise $62,000 to $68,000, you earn $58,000 and you have taken on a colleague’s accounts, so you ask for $65,000, would accept $61,000 with a date to review it again, and would trade part of the gap for a training budget.

5. Ask in a conversation, then confirm in writing

Ask for time set aside to talk about pay rather than raising it at the end of something else, and lead with the case before the figure. Using the same invented figures, an opening might run: “Since my pay was last set, I’ve taken over the Northside accounts and trained two new hires. Similar roles here pay $62,000 to $68,000, and I’d like to ask for $65,000.” If you and your manager already hold one-on-one meetings, use the next one to book that time. Afterward, send a short note summarizing what was discussed and agreed.

6. If the answer is no, agree on what would change it

A no can reflect the budget, the timing or the case. Ask which, what would need to be true for a raise, and when you can revisit it, and write down the answers. If the answers stay vague over several review cycles, that is information too, and starting a job search is one option to weigh.

Suspected pay discrimination is a legal question, not a negotiation, and this guide cannot say whether any particular gap is unlawful. In the US, guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (checked September 2026) says federal law requires equal pay for men and women doing substantially equal work in the same workplace and bars pay discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability, with time limits for filing a charge, some as short as 180 days.⁶ In the UK, Acas guidance (last updated 2024) suggests raising an equal-pay concern informally first, then through a grievance, and getting legal advice because the area is complex; its helpline takes questions about individual circumstances.⁷ Elsewhere, your national equality or labor authority can explain the rules.

WiserHours

Before you ask for a raise

• Find out when pay is reviewed and who decides
• Note the pay range for my role, if there is one
• Collect pay figures for similar roles, with their sources
• List three results or new responsibilities, with facts attached
• Decide my figure, my floor and what else matters to me
• Book time to talk about pay, and send a written summary afterward

Find this checklist online:
https://wiserhours.com/career-growth/ask-for-a-raise/#checklist-ask-for-a-raise-prep

Who asks for a raise, and who gets one

Asking for a raise is common, while succeeding by asking is much less so, according to a large Australian survey that asked employees about both. Artz, Goodall and Oswald’s 2018 study of Australian workplaces found that men and women with similar working hours asked about equally often, but women were less likely to report that asking had worked.¹

The study

Limited evidence

Asking versus getting in Australian workplaces

Employees said whether they had ever tried to get a better wage from their current employer, and whether they had won one by negotiating without changing roles. In the raw figures, 75% of men and 66% of women had asked. Comparing men and women in the same workplace who worked similar hours, the gap was small and not statistically clear; men who worked shorter hours asked less often too. Getting was another matter: about 16% of all respondents reported a raise won by negotiating, and women were about a quarter less likely than comparable men to report one.¹

The survey cannot say why women’s requests succeeded less often, and everything in it is self-reported, from one country, more than a decade ago. What it does question is the popular explanation that women earn less mainly because they do not ask.

Whether pay feels open to discussion matters too. Andreas Leibbrandt and John List tested this in a field experimentfield experiment: An experiment run in a real setting, such as a workplace, shop or website, with people going about their ordinary lives, usually with random assignment. It shows how an effect plays out in practice, though often for one setting and one group at a time.Full entry in the glossary published in 2015: nearly 2,500 US job seekers who answered their ads were randomly told, or not told, that the wage was negotiable. Without that sentence, men were more likely than women to negotiate; with it, the difference disappeared.⁸ These were applicants for administrative jobs, not employees seeking raises. A 2018 meta-analysismeta-analysis: A study that combines the results of earlier studies on the same question into one overall estimate. Pooling makes the estimate more precise, but it cannot repair the studies it pools: a meta-analysis of surveys is still survey evidence.Full entry in the glossary by Katharina Kugler and colleagues, covering studies of students and employees, found women slightly less likely than men to start negotiating, with a smaller gap where it was clear that negotiating was appropriate; only its summary was read here.⁹ A fair reading is that unclear rules about pay hold some people back more than others.

Take two analysts on one team. One assumes pay is fixed until the annual review and says nothing. The other asks her manager how pay decisions are made, and learns that budgets are set each autumn and that her role has a pay range. Only she knows when a request could land and what it would be measured against.

Why the first figure carries weight

The first figure put on the table tends to pull the final agreement toward it, an effect known as anchoringanchoring: The tendency for an estimate or decision to be pulled toward a number seen beforehand, even an irrelevant one. It is one of the effects that held up when large teams ran the original experiments again.Full entry in the glossary. Hannes Petrowsky and colleagues pooled results from 90 negotiation studies in a 2025 meta-analysis and found that more ambitious first offers went with better deals for whoever made them, but also with more talks ending without agreement and a worse experience for the other side.¹⁰

Why would a number pull? The same paper reports two preregistered experiments. In the authors’ analysis, the opening figure’s effect on counteroffers ran through what they call selective accessibility (a number bringing to mind information that fits it), while anger at an ambitious opening drove the walk-aways and the bad feelings. The pull also weakened as more issues were negotiated at once, which could apply to a pay talk that also covers title, training or flexibility. Only the paper’s abstract was read for this guide.¹⁰

The pull can be resisted. In three experiments published in 2001, Adam Galinsky and Thomas Mussweiler found that whoever made the first offer usually came out ahead, but the advantage vanished when the other negotiator concentrated on information pointing the other way: their own target, the opposite side’s bottom line, or its alternatives.¹¹ Those were buying and selling exercises, not pay reviews, and only the abstract was read here.

1. The first number on the table: tends to pull the final agreement toward it; a 2025 meta-analysis of negotiation studies found the size of first offers closely linked to the value of final agreements
2. Your own target, decided in advance: in one of three negotiation experiments published in 2001, focusing on it cancelled the advantage the other side gained by making the first offer
3. An opening you cannot explain: in the 2025 meta-analysis, ambitious first offers went with better deals but also with more talks ending in no deal and worse feelings on the other side

In a pay review the anchor often comes from the other side. Your manager opens with “most people are getting the standard increase this year,” and that becomes the reference point the rest of the talk bargains around. A figure you decided in advance, with its reasons written down, is the counterweight the 2001 experiments point to; a number far above anything you can explain risks the anger that the 2025 paper’s experiments tied to deadlock and bad feeling.

Which findings are solid, and which are thin

Each row below describes a tendency in the research or the data, not a promise about any one request.

The official statistics are the firmest rows, and they describe the ordinary year, not what any one person can get. The rows on asking and anchoring rest on a single survey and on negotiation experiments that were not about pay reviews, so they support preparation habits rather than predict outcomes.

The bottom line

The ask is the common part; the preparation is the part you control. Know what an ordinary year looks like where you work, build the case on the job rather than on your costs, decide your figure and your floor before the meeting, and leave with an agreed next step whatever the answer.