Career Confidence

28Are You Underpaid?

Going to work each day, feeling undervalued, underappreciated, and unfulfilled is not a good feeling. For many people, being underpaid is common, even accepted. But if you are at the point where you no longer wish to just keep the status quo, you must ask yourself, “Am I underpaid and how do I know for sure?”

Well, first you must know the answer to this question: “Do I feel justly compensated for the time, effort, expertise, and work I am doing?”

Second, you need to see what the going rate for your job is. Tools like salary.com, payscale.com, Glassdoor, SalaryExpert, and others can give you that information. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has tools as well. Another way is to search for your job, job title, size of company, and location on places like LinkedIn or Monster.com and see if the salaries that are being shown for similar jobs are, in fact, similar to what you are making.

I believe in gut instinct, as well as how you feel about your job, the amount of work you are doing, and how valued you feel. So while these guides and resources can help you to figure out if you are being paid fairly, I think you probably already know if you are or you are not.

There is a lot of talk about how some people must work a full-time job and a gig/side hustle to make ends meet. While I applaud anyone who does that, most full-time jobs should be enough to take care of your expenses. If it is not, you either need to look at your expenses (tough, I know) or look at ...