Career & Negotiation

A Promotion Raise Is Typically Much Bigger Than a Good-Review Raise

By Marcus Delgado / November 6, 2026 / Updated November 8, 2026

Smiling professional woman with a lanyard at her office desk

Numbers first. In Pave’s data on 46,000 U.S. employees who received a pay change in the first quarter of 2025, the median raise for people who were promoted was 9.7%. Employees rated “exceeds expectations” got a median of 5%, and those rated “meets expectations” got 3.5%. As of 8 November 2026, newer Pave figures point the same way, though Pave’s own pages disagree on the exact promotion number. The catch: this is one software vendor’s customer data, not a random sample of American workers, and it describes what happened to other people, not what will happen to you.

Key takeaways

Pave’s Q1 2025 medians: below expectations 2.8%, meets 3.5%, exceeds 5%, promoted 9.7%.
Moving from “meets” to “exceeds” added about 1.5 percentage points at the median. A promotion added about 6 points over “meets.”
Newer Pave figures (H1 2026, and a survey published 29 October 2026) show the same ranking, with typical promotion increases of roughly 9% to 12%.
Pave reports only about 8.6% of employees were promoted in H1 2026, so the big raise is one most people do not get in a given year.
The data cannot show that chasing a promotion will pay off for you. A promotion comes with a bigger job and someone else’s budget.

Who ran the numbers, and on whom

Pave sells compensation-planning software. Its post of 27 October 2025, written by compensation fellow Alex Cwirko-Godycki, reports a pay-for-performance analysis of 46,000 U.S. employees who received a pay adjustment in Q1 2025 and whose performance ratings were loaded into Pave’s Compensation Planning tool. Every company rates people differently, so Pave normalized the ratings into three tiers. The post does not say how many companies sit behind the 46,000.

The same post also reports a separate survey, run with the consulting firm Alpine Rewards, of 243 technology and life sciences companies in September 2025 about their 2026 budgets. Keep the two apart: one is what employees received, the other is what companies planned to spend.

The numbers, side by side

Group (U.S., Q1 2025)	Share who got a raise	Median raise
Below expectations	10%	2.8%
Meets expectations	88%	3.5%
Exceeds expectations	89%	5%
Promoted	100%	9.7%

A few things worth noticing. First, only 10% of the “below expectations” group got a raise, yet their median is 2.8%. That only works if the medians are calculated among people who actually got a raise. Pave’s post does not spell this out, so that is my reading.

Second, the rating changed the size of the raise far more than the odds of getting one: 88% of “meets” and 89% of “exceeds” got a raise. Pave’s author guessed the 12% of “meets” employees with no raise were at companies with pay freezes. That is a guess, not a finding.

Third, the arithmetic. On a hypothetical $80,000 salary, 3.5% is $2,800, 5% is $4,000 and 9.7% is $7,760. Pave also says 99% of promoted employees got a new equity grant, with no value given.

What has changed since the original data

As of 8 November 2026, here is what newer sources show.

Pave’s 2027 budget post (29 October 2026). The median planned U.S. merit budget is 3.5% of payroll, nearly the same as what companies actually spent in 2026. A separate pool of about 1.0% covers promotions and market adjustments. The most common average promotional increase is 9% to 12%, which Pave calls roughly three times a typical merit raise. Of the companies surveyed, 87% use individual ratings to set merit raises and 61% use equity to reward top performers. No sample size or survey dates are stated.
Pave’s H1 2026 merit-cycle page. Its merit increase page (published 26 June 2026, updated 29 October 2026) lists median raises for non-promoted employees of 4.7% for above expectations, 3.3% for meets and 2.0% for below. For promoted employees it gives 8.6% in the text but 10.3% in a comparison table, and it does not reconcile the two.
Pave’s June 2026 data post. Covering 200-plus companies and more than 100,000 employees, it puts the overall median increase for eligible employees at 3.4% in H1 2026, down from 3.5% in H1 2025 and 3.6% in H1 2024. It also gives the overall promotion rate as 8.6%. That is the same number the merit page uses for the promoted raise, so check which “8.6%” you are reading.

For outside yardsticks, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on 30 October 2026 that wages and salaries rose 3.1% over the 12 months to September 2026 in its Employment Cost Index. The Consumer Price Index rose 3.7% over the same 12 months (released 14 October 2026). So a typical “meets” raise of 3.3% to 3.5% lands slightly under inflation. The Employment Cost Index tracks labor costs for a fixed mix of jobs, so it is a yardstick, not a like-for-like comparison.

What the data cannot show

Cause. A promotion raise is not the same job at a higher price. It comes with a new title and more responsibility. The comparison tells you what promoted people received, not what the same person would have gotten by working harder in the same role.
Representativeness. This is a software vendor’s customer base. The budget survey sample was technology and life sciences companies, and the post does not give an industry mix for the 46,000. Your employer, industry or region may look different.
Comparable ratings. Pave merged different companies’ rating scales into three tiers. “Exceeds” at one firm may not mean “exceeds” at another.
The spread. A median is the middle: half of promoted employees got less than 9.7%.
Timing. The core figures are a Q1 2025 snapshot. Budgets move with the economy.
Everything else. Raises from changing employers, bonuses and the dollar value of equity are not in these numbers.

How to use it without overstating it

The sensible reading is modest: at Pave’s customers, a change in role paid several times more than a change in rating. That is a reason to ask questions, not a promise.

Ask your manager what the next level requires, in specifics you could check off.
Ask which of those you already meet and which you do not.
Ask when promotion decisions are made and whether budget exists this cycle.
Check your last raise against the table above, and against 3.7% inflation, before drawing conclusions about how you were treated.
Do not trade a good rating for a vague promise. At the median, the rating was worth about 1.5 points in Pave’s Q1 2025 data, which is real money but not life-changing.

Frequently asked questions

Is a promotion raise always around 10%?

No. 9.7% was the median in Pave’s Q1 2025 data. Pave’s 2027 survey says 9% to 12% is the most common average promotional increase at companies. Pave’s H1 2026 page gives 8.6% in one place and 10.3% in another.

How much does a better review add?

In the Q1 2025 data, “exceeds” had a median raise of 5% against 3.5% for “meets,” a gap of 1.5 points. In the H1 2026 figures it is 4.7% against 3.3%, a gap of 1.4 points.

Why did 12% of “meets expectations” employees get no raise?

The data does not say. Pave’s author suspected salary freezes at struggling companies, but that is an inference, not something the dataset shows.

Will these numbers match my employer?

Maybe, maybe not. They come from companies that use Pave’s software, and its budget survey skews toward technology and life sciences. For a broader benchmark, see the BLS figure above: 3.1% wage growth for the 12 months to September 2026.

Before you decide

If you are weighing whether to chase a promotion, the data supports asking about the next level, not rearranging your life around it. Only about one in twelve employees was promoted in a recent half-year at Pave’s customers, and the decision rests with your employer. For a bigger money decision, a fee-only fiduciary adviser or your HR department can look at your actual situation. This article cannot.