I use www.payscale.com - They have employee generated salary information you can use to research careers (based on a number of factors including location, degree, experience, etc.) I have found it to be extremely accurate.
I was asked to take a look on salary.com to get an average salary base for a specific position. Maybe it's just me, but the national and area-specific salaries seem a bit high. I'm assuming they may use the U.S. Census to gather this information.
I think all online salary company data needs to be used as a point of reference, and that's all. I just did some checking to verify accuracy of two sites referenced in this list of posts and one was under 30k on the mid point and another was over 100k to mid point for the area for two specific jobs. If you are doing this for yourself, it may be okay to look at various "what should I be making.com" sites, but if you are doing this for your employer to establish pay grades, it could get you in big trouble. Lower paying jobs may be closer to the midpoint as it may be easier to get those pay rates with more available data, but exempt and other higher positions need to be researched properly to keep from over or under evaluating pay grades- which could lead to turnover for lower wages or a loss of income due to excessive wages over market.
Ask- if possible- to see how many surveys were used, how old it is, if they were trended, and what their R squared is. If they cannot tell you, or if the R squared is very low, I would only use these types of salary grading sources for personal information, and nothing more.
If the R squared is over 90%, it could be used differently. Hope this helps and good luck!
It's just one reference tool. You should also look at the labor statistics in your city and state, which is an easy online search. You could also visit your local library and speak to a librarian about median salaries for the field you are looking for. Good luck!
If not, what are some salary websites that are accurate?
