Published 29 October 2026 · Salary
Your new offer letter says your salary is going from $54,000 to $56,700. Is that a good raise? Before you can answer, you need it as a percentage, because that's how employers, surveys and coworkers talk about raises.
The formula
Subtract your old pay from your new pay, divide by your old pay, then multiply by 100.
Raise % = (new pay − old pay) ÷ old pay × 100
With the numbers above:
- $56,700 − $54,000 = $2,700
- $2,700 ÷ $54,000 = 0.05
- 0.05 × 100 = 5%
So that's a 5% raise. If you'd rather skip the arithmetic, the salary increase calculator does it in one step and shows the result for every pay period.
It works the same for hourly pay
If your rate goes from $22.50 to $23.40 an hour, the difference is $0.90. Divide $0.90 by $22.50 and you get 0.04, which is a 4% raise.
Ninety cents doesn't sound like much. Over a full-time year of 2,080 hours, it adds up to $1,872.
Divide by the old number, not the new one
This is the most common slip. If you divide the $2,700 increase by the new salary of $56,700 instead of the old one, you get 4.76%. The raise looks smaller than it really is.
The percentage always describes the change from where you started, so the old salary goes on the bottom of the fraction.
What a raise means per paycheck
Annual figures are easy to compare, but you feel a raise in your paycheck. To see that, divide the yearly increase by the number of paychecks you get:
| How often you're paid | Paychecks per year | Extra per paycheck on a $2,700 raise |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | 12 | $225.00 |
| Every two weeks | 26 | $103.85 |
| Weekly | 52 | $51.92 |
These are gross amounts. After tax and any deductions that scale with pay, such as retirement contributions, the change in your take-home pay will be smaller.
If the raise starts partway through the year
A raise that takes effect on July 1 only covers half the year. On the $54,000 example, you'd get $1,350 extra this calendar year, not $2,700. The full amount shows up next year. Keep this in mind if you're comparing what you earned this year with what you were promised.
Raise versus bonus
A raise changes your base pay, so it carries forward into every future year and every future raise. A one-off bonus of the same size doesn't. If you're offered a choice between a $2,700 raise and a $2,700 bonus, the raise is worth more over time.
Is your raise good?
Many employers give annual merit raises of about 3% to 5%. Anything well above that usually comes with a promotion or a job change. The more useful comparison is with inflation: if prices went up faster than your pay, your raise didn't fully keep up.
To see what different percentages are worth on common salaries, see the pay raise percentage table, or jump straight to a 3% raise or a 5% raise.