How much salary to ask for: working out the figure and when to say it

Why this question carries so much weight

Whatever figure you say in the first conversation becomes the anchor for everything that follows. Say too little and the offer lands close to it, even if the employer had room for more. Say a number without explaining where it comes from and it sounds arbitrary, and the conversation gets tense.

The problem is not asking for too much or too little: it is asking without data. If you arrive with the market range and a clear rationale, you negotiate on facts. If you arrive with a hunch, you negotiate on nerves.

Start with the market range

Before thinking about your own number, you need to know what the role pays in that city and in that kind of organisation. Look at the median and the extremes, not only the average. A very wide range usually means the same job title hides quite different responsibilities, and you need to know which version you are being hired for.

Three sources work well, and it pays to cross-check them because each has its own bias:

• Job ads that publish a salary, which are increasingly common. Collect ten or fifteen similar roles and note the range for each one.
• Annual salary guides from recruitment firms, by sector and level. Useful to place yourself, although they tend to reflect mid-sized and large employers.
• People doing the same job elsewhere. They will often share more than you expect if you ask about ranges ("would £40,000 be far off?") rather than their payslip.

Then, your three numbers

With the market range in front of you, work out your three figures in this order. Write them down: you do not think as clearly halfway through a phone call as you do at your desk.

1. 1
   Your walk-away figure

   The number below which you would not change jobs. It comes from your current salary, what you lose by leaving (bonus, hybrid days, accrued benefits) and the cost of the move. You never say it, but you need to be clear on it, because it is what lets you say no.

2. 2
   Your target

   Where you would be comfortable. If you meet everything the ad asks for, it usually sits in the middle or upper part of the market range. If you are missing an important requirement, nearer the middle.

3. 3
   Your opening figure

   A little above your target, because negotiations nearly always move down. If you give it as a range, the bottom of that range is your target, not your walk-away figure.

4. 4
   The whole package

   Turn everything into an annual value: base, a realistic bonus (not the maximum), employer pension contribution, private medical cover, training, hybrid days and holiday. A slightly lower base with more flexibility or an agreed review can be the better deal.

A worked example from start to finish

This is the method applied to a concrete case. The person and the numbers are invented, to show the calculation.

What to say at each stage of the process

The money question comes up at different points, and the right answer is not the same at each one. This table sums up what works and what to avoid at every stage.

The EU pay transparency directive: what changes

Directive (EU) 2023/970, adopted on 10 May 2023, changes the rules of this conversation across the European Union. Its Article 5 gives job applicants the right to receive from the prospective employer information on the starting pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, for example in the published job ad, before the interview or otherwise. It goes further: employers may not ask applicants about their pay history. If you are applying for roles in the EU, in euros, this matters directly; the UK, outside the EU, is not bound by it.

Once you are in the job, Article 7 gives you the right to request in writing your own pay level and the average for your category broken down by sex, with an answer due within two months at most. Employers with 250 or more workers will have to report on their gender pay gap every year from 7 June 2027, and where the gap in a category reaches 5% without objective justification, they will have to carry out a joint pay assessment with workers' representatives.

The deadline for turning it into national law was 7 June 2026, but not every country made it. According to Lockton's tracker of 25 September 2026, only five countries had fully transposed it: Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia. Spain, France, Germany and Portugal were still at the draft stage. In practice, more and more EU job ads will come with a published range, and that changes your task: you no longer have to guess the range, you have to decide where in it you belong and why.

When the offer arrives

Say thank you, ask for the offer in writing and take a day or two. If it is below what you expected, come back with a specific figure and reasons: the market, your experience in something the role needs, another offer if you have one. Personal reasons such as rent or a mortgage do not help: the negotiation rests on what the role is worth.

If the base will not move, negotiate the rest: bonus, an agreed salary review at six or twelve months, hybrid days, training budget, pension contribution or start date. There is often more room there than in the base, because none of it touches the salary band for the role.