If you want to make a case for a raise, start with where the money comes from. A lot of it has already been divided up before anyone asks. Each year employers set a budget for salary increases. Mercer’s October 2025 survey of more than 1,000 US employers found that 83% of them planned to distribute their 2026 budgets “equally across the organization”. They did not plan to steer more of it toward particular skills or market gaps. So when you ask for more, you’re usually asking for money from a pot that has already been shared out evenly. Budget is also the reason people hear most often when they’re turned down. Payscale’s 2018 survey of US workers found that 49% of those refused were told it was budget.
That changes what your case has to do. Telling your manager that you work hard or that your rent has gone up doesn’t explain why your share should be bigger than everyone else’s. So a case that works shows why your pay belongs outside the even split. Maybe the job has grown since your pay was last set, or maybe the market now pays noticeably more for the work you do. It could also be both. The case also has to be something your manager can repeat without you in the room, because they usually have to take the request to someone else.
This guide covers four parts that are easy to get wrong. The first is which of your work belongs in a pay case. The second is a market range built from more than one source. The third is your manager’s replies, and the fourth is what to do after each kind of no. The guide is about more pay in the same role. A promotion is a different conversation, so the first section shows how to tell the two apart.
Is this a raise or a promotion, and how often does asking work?
Not every raise request is the same request, so it helps to know which one you’re making before you say a word. We sort them into three kinds. That’s our own split rather than an official one, though it follows how the money tends to move.
The first kind is the cycle increase. That’s the annual merit raise most employers pay out of the budget described above. It’s decided mostly by the size of the budget and your performance rating. The second is a market adjustment. You ask for one because your pay has fallen behind what other employers pay for the same work. The third is a scope case, where the job itself has grown since your pay was set. You may now look after more people or more sites, or be responsible for more money or more systems.
Each needs different proof. A market adjustment rests on outside pay data, while a scope case rests on a before-and-after comparison of your own job. That’s why you need to say which one you’re making. If you don’t, your manager may answer a different question from the one you asked. Say you ask because the job has doubled. What they hear is a request for a bigger cycle increase, so they tell you everyone is getting the same this year.
There’s one more possibility to rule out. The work you’re doing now may belong to the next level up, with a different title and different expectations. If so, you’re making a promotion case. The guide to asking for the promotion you want is the better tool for that. The difference matters because a title change and a pay change are often decided by different people on different timetables. A raise in your current role also won’t fix a job that has outgrown its level.
As for whether asking works, the best-known figures are older than most people realize. Payscale’s survey covered more than 160,000 people, but it ran in 2018. It also covered US workers only and relied on what people reported about themselves. So read it with those limits in mind. It found that only 37% had ever asked their current employer for a raise. Of those who asked, 70% got something. Here’s how everyone who asked fared:
- 39% got the amount they asked for.
- 31% got less.
- 30% got nothing.
The people who were refused were often told very little. Budget was the reason for 49% of them, and 33% were given no reason at all. Those two figures are why the section on what to do after a no is split the way it is. But the survey can’t tell you why some people got a raise and others didn’t, or how big the raises were.
It’s also worth knowing the size of a normal increase. Glassdoor’s widely read guide says a standard annual raise “typically lands around 3% to 5%”. It also makes a fair point: a bigger jump is defensible when you’ve taken on significantly more responsibility or you’re underpaid. Mercer’s own figures for 2026 are narrower. US employers plan merit increases of 3.2% and total increases of 3.5%. The total figure also covers promotions, cost-of-living rises and other adjustments. Promotions themselves average 8.7%. These are planned budgets rather than anyone’s actual raise. Even so, they show why a request for noticeably more than the cycle increase has to be a market or scope case. “My annual raise, only bigger” is exactly the request an even split is designed to turn down.
Which of your work belongs in a case for a raise?
The rest of this post follows one illustrative example to make this concrete. It’s a composite made up for this guide, not a real person or company. Philippa is the facilities lead at a professional services firm. Her pay was last set at a review two years ago. Back then she looked after one office of about 180 people and managed two service contracts, for cleaning and maintenance. Since then the firm has opened a second office and taken over a small records warehouse. So she now covers three sites, about 420 people and six contracts. Her title hasn’t changed. Her firm’s job levels put multi-site facilities work at the level she’s already at, and that’s why this is a raise case rather than a promotion case.
Her job doesn’t come with a sales number, so her first draft was a list of everything she does. But a pay case needs much less. It needs evidence from after her pay was last set, because in principle anything earlier was paid for at that review. It needs a comparison of the job then and the job now. It also needs lines that pair with the market range she’ll build next. That’s because a range only means something if the job being compared is described accurately.
That cut her draft down to three lines. The first is the scope comparison: what she covered at her last review against what she covers today. The second is a result with a starting point. She moved maintenance requests from three email inboxes into one ticket queue. The share of requests closed within two working days then went from about 60% to about 85% over the following year. Her manager Walter can pull that figure from the ticket system himself. The third line ties her work to something Walter was measured on. The second office opened on its planned date, and she ran the fit-out and the move-in.
Each of those gives Walter something he can say to whoever approves the money without having to argue for it. “The job has more than doubled since her last review” is a fact anyone can check. But “She works really hard” is an opinion, and an easy one to set aside.
Some things don’t belong, even when they’re true. The cost of living, a rent increase and the evenings you’ve stayed late are real pressures. Even so, they’re hard for your manager to carry to a budget holder, because everyone on the team could make the same argument. That’s our judgment rather than a rule. A plain list of duties falls flat for a similar reason. So the promotion guide’s advice on attaching an outcome to each item applies here too.
Your work may really have no number attached, or what you did may have been part of a team result. If so, our guide on how to communicate your impact at work shows how to describe it honestly. This section only decides which of those lines go into a pay case. If you don’t have a record to draw from yet, start keeping an evidence file before the review form opens.
There was one line Philippa wanted to keep and didn’t. Three years ago she ran the firm’s office relocation, the biggest project she’s done there. But it happened before her last review, so Walter could fairly say it had already been recognized. Leaving it in would have made the rest of the case look padded. She still thinks her last review underpaid that project, and that thought comes back later.
Keep the finished case short enough to say in two or three minutes. Your manager is carrying it upward, and they can only carry so much.
How do you find a market range that holds up?
A single number from a single salary site is often the weakest part of a raise request. Alison Green writes the long-running Ask a Manager advice column. She put the problem plainly in a 2012 piece on asking for a raise: “many job-seekers report that these sites don’t account for the fact that job titles frequently represent wildly different scopes of responsibility.” That’s one manager’s view rather than a study. But anyone who has compared job ads will recognize it. A facilities lead at a 60-person firm and a facilities lead at a hospital group are doing different jobs under the same name. Salary sites add a second problem, because their figures are either reported by users or estimated by a model. You usually can’t see which, or how many people sit behind a number.
So match on the work, not the title. The section on scope in our guide to growing your career without becoming a manager explains what to compare. The practical test for a pay case is how closely the other role matches yours. Look for similar duties and a similar size of team, budget or workload. Look for a similar industry and a similar size of employer, in a similar place. If you can’t match one of those, say so rather than hoping nobody notices.
Use more than one source as well, because each one goes wrong in a different way.
| Source | What it’s good for | How it can mislead |
|---|---|---|
| Pay ranges posted on job ads for roles with similar duties | Current figures from real employers, and you can read the duties | Ranges can be very wide, ads can be old, and a posted range isn’t what anyone was actually hired at |
| Peers, recruiters, and a salary survey from a professional association in your field | Detail on scope, and surveys are often split by region and employer size | Small samples, only some people choose to answer, peers may not want to say, and recruiters have an interest in the number |
| A salary site or a government earnings dataset | A sanity check on whether the other two are roughly right | Matched on title or on a whole occupation, so it tells you little about your scope |
Write down what each source matched and what it didn’t. Take the range where the sources overlap and decide where in that range you sit and why. Base that on the evidence from the last section. Ask for a specific figure rather than “more”, because a manager can’t take “more” to anyone. Decide your floor before the meeting too. That’s the lowest number you’d accept as a fair answer to this request. This part is our judgment. But if you haven’t settled your floor beforehand, you’ll end up settling it under pressure in the room.
Philippa earns $68,000. Her sources didn’t agree, which is normal. She found five ads in her region that posted a pay range for facilities roles covering several sites. Four ran from about $72,000 to $88,000. The fifth paid $85,000 to $98,000. But it covered six sites and a building program with its own capital budget, which she doesn’t run. So she set it aside and wrote down why. Her professional association’s salary survey put the median for multi-site facilities roles at about $79,000. But the regional sample was small and leaned toward larger employers than hers. Two peers at similar firms told her roughly what they earned, and both were in the mid-to-high $70,000s. She also searched a salary site on her job title, which gave $61,000 to $74,000. That mainly showed how little a title tells you.
The first three sources overlap at roughly $74,000 to $82,000. She decided to ask for $78,000 in the middle of it, because her scope matches the four ads she kept but her firm is smaller than the survey’s typical employer. Her floor is $74,000, the bottom of the overlap. Working it through also settled which case she was making. The job had grown, and the range showed that the market pays more for the job it had grown into. So this is a scope case first and a market case second.
The highest number she found is the one she didn’t use. That matters because a range that leaves out the convenient outlier survives the reply “that’s a different job”. A range built on it usually doesn’t.
One limit applies to every source here. A market range tells you what a role pays elsewhere. But it doesn’t tell you what your employer has budgeted, or whether it’s willing to pay the market rate. That’s why the conversation is still a negotiation and not a presentation of facts. Use the range to explain your number, but don’t turn it into an ultimatum. Never mention an offer from another employer that you don’t actually have.
When should you ask?
Timing matters mostly because of when budgets are set. Mercer ran its survey between 20 and 31 October 2025 to find out what employers planned to spend in 2026. So the size of the pot has usually been decided by the time a year starts. Glassdoor’s guide makes a related point when it says you may need to wait if “fiscal planning has already closed.” We draw an inference from both, and it is only an inference. You should ask early enough for your request to be part of the budget conversation rather than arrive after it. Your manager will know your company’s calendar. That’s why one of the most useful questions you can ask a few weeks ahead is simply when next year’s pay budget gets decided.
We think the better moments come just after a result people noticed or soon after your scope has visibly grown. Just before the pay round opens is a good time too. The worse ones include the week of a reorganization or layoffs. A time when your manager is under pressure on their own budget is also a poor choice, and so is a stretch when your own work has been shaky. Tenure plays a part as well. Payscale’s report found that “Workers with two to three years at the same organization were just over three times as likely to have received a raise after asking, compared to a new employee.” The same limits apply as before, since the data is from 2018, US only and self-reported. So it’s a pattern in survey answers rather than a rule. But it does suggest that a first-year ask needs your strongest evidence.
Book the conversation in advance and say what it’s for. Something as plain as this works: “Could we have twenty minutes next week to talk about my pay?” Don’t raise it in a corridor or at the end of a meeting about something else. That leaves your manager no time to find out what’s possible before you meet, and finding that out is exactly what you want them to do.
How to ask for a raise in the conversation itself
This is how Philippa’s conversation with Walter went, step by step. Her exact words are illustrative, but the reasons behind them are the part worth keeping.
Open with what your manager will need to do
Philippa started by telling Walter what the meeting was for and what she’d like him to do with it: “Thanks for making the time. I’d like to ask for a raise, and I’ve put together what I think you’d need to take it to HR before next year’s budget is set in six weeks.”
There’s a reason it’s built that way. Walter almost certainly can’t approve a raise on his own. Philippa knows it, but she doesn’t make him say so. Instead she treats him as the person who’ll carry the case and offers him what he’ll need to carry it. Mentioning the budget deadline matters as well, because it tells him the request has a date attached. It also shows him she’s thought about how pay decisions are actually made at the firm. That makes everything after it easier to take seriously.
Give the evidence in the order that suits the case
Philippa is making a scope case first, so she started with scope. At her last review she had one site, 180 people and two contracts. Now she has three sites, about 420 people and six contracts. Next came the ticket queue, where requests closed within two working days went from about 60% to about 85%. Last came the second office opening on its planned date.
Scope goes first because it’s the strongest line and the easiest to check. It’s also the one Walter is most likely to repeat to HR word for word. The office opening goes last because it ties the case to something Walter himself had to report on, so the evidence ends on ground he already knows. If she’d been making a market case, she’d have started with the range instead.
Say the range, the sources and the figure
Next came the market range, said as a range with its sources named: “Four similar roles in our region post between $72,000 and $88,000. Our association’s survey puts the median at about $79,000, and two people I know in similar jobs are in the mid-to-high seventies. I left out one ad that paid more, because it covered six sites and a capital budget. I’m asking for $78,000.”
Mentioning the ad she left out is deliberate. It shows Walter she didn’t go looking for the highest number she could find. It also answers his most likely objection before he raises it.
He raised a version of it anyway: “Those ads are for facilities managers. Your title is lead.” Philippa didn’t argue about titles. Instead she said that was exactly why she’d compared duties, and she offered to send him the four ads with the matching duties marked. Walter accepted the scope figures without much discussion. But he was less convinced by the survey, because its respondents were mostly bigger companies. Philippa agreed it was the weakest of her three sources. She pointed out that this was one reason she’d asked for less than its median. Walter didn’t say whether that settled it for him, and she didn’t press.
Stop talking after the number
Once Philippa had said $78,000, she stopped. That’s harder than it sounds, because the pull is to fill the pause with something that softens the ask. You might say you know budgets are tight, or that something smaller would still help. But every one of those sentences does your manager’s bargaining for him before he’s said a word. So Philippa waited, looked at her notes and let Walter speak first.
Holding a figure calmly is assertive communication. That means not apologizing for it and not turning it into a demand. It’s the part of this conversation that most rewards practice.
Answer the replies you’re most likely to hear
Many managers reach for one of a small number of replies, and each needs a different answer. If you’d like to see the other side of the table, our guide on how a manager should answer a request for a pay raise describes what your manager is likely to do next.
“I don’t set pay” is usually true, so arguing with it gets you nowhere. The useful answer turns it into a task with a deadline: “Understood. What does HR need to see from you, and when do they need it to make this year’s round?” That keeps the conversation on what Walter can do. It also lets Philippa offer to produce whatever format HR wants.
“Everyone’s getting the same increase this year” invites a debate about fairness, and you’ll lose that debate. The better answer separates the two requests: “I’m not asking for a bigger share of the cycle increase. I’m asking for the job to be paid for what it has become since my last review.” It doesn’t dispute the even split. Instead it explains why this request sits outside it.
If the reply is “Your numbers are for other companies”, the answer is the matching you did beforehand. Own the comparison and say what each source matched and what it didn’t. You can also offer to show your working, as Philippa did with the ads.
“You’re doing really well, let’s wait for your review” is a “not yet”. The next section covers what to do with it.
If your manager says “Can you send me that?”, take it as good news. It’s the thing they’ll carry upward, so send a short written version the same day. Philippa’s ran to half a page. It had the three evidence lines and the range with its sources. It also had the ad she left out, the $78,000 figure and what they’d agreed. Glassdoor’s guide recommends the same habit: “Follow up in writing to confirm numbers, timelines, and next steps.” It’s good practice, but it isn’t a formal or legal step.
Leave with who does what, and by when
Walter wouldn’t commit to $78,000 in the room, which is normal. What Philippa left with was a next step instead. She’d send the summary that afternoon and the marked-up ads the next morning. He’d take the case to HR before the budget meeting and tell her the outcome within two weeks. Neither of them made any threats, and nothing in her case hinted at leaving. That matters because a raise request that sounds like a threat lands on the same person who writes your next review.
What do you do after each kind of no?
You won’t know in advance which no you’ll hear. So your first job when you hear one is to work out which kind it is, because the right next move is different for each.
Payscale’s 2018 US figures show how refusals tend to be explained. Here is what the people who were turned down were told:
- 49% were told it was budget.
- 33% got no reason.
- 9% were told they’d asked outside the established time for raises.
- 7% were told they hadn’t been in the role long enough.
- 3% were told their performance didn’t warrant it.
Only 23% of those who were given a reason said they believed it. Being told you’re at the top of your pay band doesn’t appear in Payscale’s list at all. We’ve included it below because it’s a common reply in companies with formal pay ranges. But everything said about it here is our judgment rather than data.
”There’s no budget”
Budget is the most common reason people are given. It’s also the easiest to hide behind, because you can’t check it. Lydia Frank was then a vice president at Payscale. She told CNBC what to do when a manager cites a tight budget. Her advice was to ask whether it’s a short-term cash problem or a long-term one. She also suggested asking when would be a better time to talk about it again. Her broader advice was simple: “don’t assume a ‘no’ today is a ‘no’ forever.”
Two more questions help you tell a real constraint from a polite refusal. First, ask whether any money is being found for anyone this round. If adjustments are going to other people, the budget isn’t the whole story. Second, ask when the next budget decision will be made and agree a date to come back before it. We think a smaller step now with a named date for the rest is a legitimate outcome rather than a defeat. But a freeze with no date attached is a different signal, and the last section of this post deals with it.
This is the no Philippa heard. Walter came back with HR’s answer two weeks later. The firm spread its increase budget evenly and wasn’t going to change that this year. But HR had a small amount set aside for market adjustments, and it agreed $3,000 now. That took her to $71,000. HR also agreed to compare the role against her ads and the survey at the firm’s mid-year pay review, with a decision promised within six months. Nobody explained why the figure was $3,000. When she asked, Walter said it was what HR could find. That was all he knew. She sent a short note the same afternoon recording the $71,000, the comparison and the six-month date.
So Philippa landed among the 31% in Payscale’s data who got a raise, but less than they asked for. Whether the mid-year review gets her to $78,000 is still open. The relocation never came up either. She still thinks her last review underpaid it, but this case was never going to fix that.
”You’re at the top of your band”
A pay band is the range of pay a company sets for a particular level. Being told you’re at the top of yours can mean three quite different things, and each needs a different response.
The first is that the band is out of date. If your market range sits above the top of the band, the case is really about the band. That’s something your manager can take to HR, so ask when the bands were last checked against the market. The second is that the band is current and the job has reached its ceiling. If so, the real question is level, and you’re back to the promotion conversation from the start of this post. The third is compression. That’s when people hired into the same role recently are coming in at or above your pay. If you know that’s happening, it’s market evidence in its own right because it shows what the company itself is paying for the role today. Your company may also have separate bands for specialists and managers. If so, the questions about pay band parity in our career growth guide are worth asking as well.
Sometimes the offer that comes back isn’t base pay at all. Glassdoor suggests that if the answer is no, you “negotiate benefits, a title, or a defined review date instead of walking away empty-handed”. A one-off payment, a training budget or extra leave can be part of that. Accepting one of those is fine when it’s what you’d choose anyway. But it’s a poor outcome when it becomes the automatic answer to every no, because none of it changes the pay that next year’s increase is calculated on.
”Not yet”
A “not yet” usually comes in one of two forms, and Payscale’s figures cover both. Nine percent of refused people were told they’d asked outside the established time for raises. Another 7% were told they hadn’t been in the role long enough.
If it’s about timing, find out when the established time is and what your manager will take into it on your behalf. Your case needs to be in their hands before that date, not after. If it’s about time in the role, ask whether that’s a written policy or a preference. The difference matters. A policy gives you a date to plan around. A preference gives you something to discuss, especially if your scope has grown faster than your tenure.
Alison Green’s advice from Ask a Manager holds either way: “If your boss turns down your request, don’t just skulk away! Instead, ask what you would need to accomplish in order to earn a raise in the future.” The promotion guide linked earlier has a longer treatment of turning a “not yet” into a plan, and most of it carries over.
No reason, or a vague answer
This is the least useful no, and in Payscale’s data it was the second most common. A third of those refused got no reason at all. When you hear it, ask for the basis of the decision. Ask it as a question rather than an accusation: “Could you help me understand what the decision was based on? I’d like to know what would need to change.” Wording it that way gives your manager room to answer instead of defend. It often turns up a reason they hadn’t thought to say out loud.
Follow up in writing afterward, as you would after any pay conversation. Record what you asked for and what you were told. You may keep getting no reason even after a clear case and a written follow-up. If so, that tells you something about how pay decisions are made where you work, and the last section of this post comes back to that.
How does asking for a pay rise or increment differ in the US, the UK and India?
The figures here are national or survey averages, not targets for any one person. Each comes from the source named with it.
Mercer’s planned 2026 budgets for the US were covered earlier. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a wider view of pay growth for private industry: “Wages and salaries increased 3.1 percent, while benefit costs were up 3.8 percent, over the year ended in June 2026.”
The usual term in the UK is a pay rise. The Office for National Statistics reported annual growth in regular earnings of 3.5% in Great Britain for May to July 2026. That figure excludes bonuses, and the next release is due on 20 October 2026. Acas guidance on pay rises says there’s no legal requirement for an employer to give one, except in three cases:
- You earn the minimum wage and it rises.
- You earn the minimum wage and move into the next age bracket.
- Your contract entitles you to one.
Where a contract says a rise is discretionary, “the employer should still act fairly when deciding whether to pay it.” Acas’s page on asking for and awarding pay rises also says that “Asking for a pay rise is unlikely to be a fair reason to dismiss someone.” This is general information, not legal advice. So check Acas or a qualified adviser about your own situation.
The usual term in India is an increment, and the numbers are of a different order. The Deloitte India Talent Outlook 2026 was published on 06 April 2026. It was based on a January to February 2026 survey of CHROs and HR leaders across seven sectors. It found that “companies are projecting pay increases at 9.1 percent for 2026 (compared with 9.0 percent in 2025).” The release doesn’t say how many companies took part. The practical point is that a 3% to 5% anchor taken from US material is the wrong yardstick in India. So build your range from local sources. Tax and notice periods also differ by country, as do bonus customs and pay transparency rules. All of these are outside the scope of this guide.
When won’t a good case get you a raise?
Everything above assumes a reasonable case gets a reasonable hearing. Sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s better to know that going in. What follows is our judgment, except where a source is named.
A pay freeze or a hiring freeze can turn a good case into a no, because the decision has been made above your manager’s head. The case is still worth making, since it puts your request on record and sets up the next round. But don’t expect anything now. If the freeze has no end date, take that as information about the company’s finances rather than about you.
One person’s request won’t fix a pay structure that doesn’t reward your kind of role. The bands may be compressed, or your function may sit in a range that hasn’t moved in years. In both cases the question shifts from your number to whether the company pays for this work at all. That’s for your manager and HR to answer, and you may not like the answer.
A case you can’t actually show is worth waiting on. If your evidence is thin, say so to yourself honestly and spend one or two quarters building it. Asking early with a weak case uses up credibility the stronger case will need later.
Sometimes the honest next step is to look elsewhere. Your market range may say you’re paid well below what the same scope pays in other companies. If your employer still refuses to move after a reasoned case and a dated follow-up, it’s reasonable to see what the market offers. That’s true whether it can’t move or won’t. Looking isn’t bluffing. But Frank told CNBC that using another offer to get a raise can backfire. Your manager may call your bluff, and then you’d have to change jobs. So don’t hint at leaving, and don’t mention an offer you don’t have. If a real offer comes, it’s a separate decision about whether to go and not a line for this conversation.
Not everyone gets the same hearing, though. Payscale’s 2018 US data controlled for factors such as tenure and job level, and it still found that “Women of color were 19 percent less likely to have received a raise than a white man, and men of color were 25 percent less likely.” ScienceDaily’s report of an Australian study describes research that used survey data from 2013 to 2014 covering about 4,600 workers. The report said women asked for raises as often as men. But it also said that “men are 25 per cent more likely to get a raise when they ask.”
If you’re planning to ask this year, start this week. Decide which of the three cases you’re making and write your three lines of evidence from since your pay was last set. After that, collect three sources for your range and ask your manager when next year’s pay budget is decided.
Rehearse the replies before the real conversation
The evidence and the range are things you can prepare on paper. The replies are harder, because they arrive in the moment. That’s when people soften their number, start arguing about fairness or accept the first no without asking which kind it was.
But you can practice that part out loud. Merlin can play your manager and give you the replies covered here, including “there’s no budget” and “everyone’s getting the same”. That way you can hear how your answers sound and practice holding your figure without folding. Merlin runs natively in Slack and Microsoft Teams. What you tell Merlin stays between you and Merlin. Your conversations are private.
Practice the conversation with Merlin before you book the twenty minutes.