A 3% pay rise feels good. In a year of 5% inflation, it's effectively a 2% cut. As obvious as that sounds, it's reliably missed, in HR conversations, in collective bargaining, in how people perceive their own progress. This calculator places your salary against the inflation line for your country, so you can see where you actually stand.
Two comparisons that matter
Your salary now, against your salary then. Sounds trivial. Rarely written down honestly, especially when the rise came via a job change and nobody mentions the old number any more.
Inflation since your last rise. The calculator uses official consumer price index data from each country's national statistics agency: Destatis for Germany, ONS for the UK, BLS for the US, INSEE for France, and so on. It computes cumulative inflation between the date you give us and today. The output: what your salary would need to be now, to hold the same purchasing power.
What you get
An honest diagnosis: have you held purchasing power, gained, or lost? Plus a ready-formatted paragraph you can paste into your next salary conversation or an email to your manager. With correct figures, sourced, without exaggeration. The case is sober, because sober cases are the ones that work.
Bonus for German users
For Germany, we also overlay national wage growth from Destatis's Verdiensteindex. This adds a third line to your chart showing how German salaries have moved on average since your start date. If you've risen faster than the average, you've relatively gained. If you've risen slower, you've relatively lost ground compared to the typical worker. Other countries get the inflation line only, which is the core measure. National wage-growth overlays for additional countries are on the roadmap.
What we don't model
Variable comp, bonuses, equity: too individual. Sector-specific wage growth: the calculator uses the national average where it has one. Your own sector may have moved faster or slower.