How do you find out if you are underpaid?

Start with the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, which publishes median and percentile wages by occupation and metropolitan area from actual employer reporting rather than self-selected submissions. Layer on industry-specific compensation surveys, which are more precise for specialized roles, and crowd-sourced sites, which are useful for direction but skew toward certain industries and roles and are self-reported. The most current signal is often job postings themselves, since pay transparency laws in a growing number of states now require salary ranges to be disclosed, which means you can read what your own employer is offering for roles like yours.

Pay compression is the specific pattern that makes longtime employees underpaid. Annual raises typically run a few percent while market rates for a role can move much faster, so an employee who stays five years while receiving standard increases can fall well behind someone hired externally into the same job today. This is not usually malice; it is the arithmetic of merit increase budgets against market movement, and it is why changing employers has historically produced larger raises than staying. Knowing the gap gives you something concrete to raise internally before concluding you must leave.

Two things to do with the number once you have it. Present it as market data rather than as a grievance, framed around the role's market rate and your specific contributions, with documented accomplishments attached. And know your legal footing: the National Labor Relations Act protects most private-sector employees discussing wages with coworkers, so policies forbidding it are generally unlawful, and several states prohibit employers from asking about salary history, which exists precisely to stop past underpayment from following you. If the internal conversation goes nowhere over a reasonable period, interviewing elsewhere produces both a benchmark and leverage, though be prepared for a counteroffer conversation and decide in advance what you would do with one.