Resume tower · floor

How to ask for a raise at work, and when to ask

The pages answering how to ask for a raise at work are mostly written by people who benefit from your career anxiety, and one of the first results today is a credit card company. There is a source with no stake in it at all, it is more specific than any of them, and nothing on the first page of Google links to it: a state labour department.

It starts with the question everybody skips, which is not how but when.

That third moment deserves its own paragraph, because it is the one most people let pass. When your manager asks you to take on a project, train somebody, or cover a departure, the request arrives as a compliment and is answered with a yes. The department treats it as a negotiation point — and gives you the sentence.

The reasoning behind it is worth carrying even if you never use those exact words: “Although it may just be a shift in responsibilities, it could also mean additional work… You should ask yourself what it’s taking to do this additional work, compared to just doing your regular work in the past.” The test is not whether the new task is impressive. It is whether it costs you hours you were not spending before.

Two practical rules from the same source, both blunter than the usual advice. The first is to rehearse: “Practising boosts your confidence and helps you stay calm and consistent during negotiations.” The second is one we have not seen stated so plainly anywhere else — “Don’t negotiate over text message: It is viewed as disrespectful and irresponsible.” By extension, this is a conversation, not a message. Writing can follow it and should, but it should not open it.

What to do when the answer is no. This is where most advice stops and where the useful part begins. A refusal is information if you make it specific: ask what would have to be true for the answer to be yes, and when it would be reasonable to raise it again. A manager who can answer both questions has given you a plan. A manager who cannot has told you something about the job that is worth knowing before you spend another year in it.

And if the answer is no because the budget is genuinely fixed — which is often true, particularly on banded pay scales — the same principle applies as with a job offer. Title, training, a defined review date, a change in duties that makes your next application stronger: several of these cost the employer less than salary and are worth real money to you.

The comparison that decides the whole thing. The department’s guidance on offers notes that employers frequently set your pay from your previous pay, and that being underpaid tends to persist. The blunt version is that a raise negotiated internally competes with the raise available by changing employer, and for most people over a career the second has historically been larger. That comparison is not in the department’s guidance and is our own observation — but it is worth making honestly, because a page that only tells you how to ask is only telling you half of what you are choosing between.

Everything in quotation marks on this floor comes from the New York State Department of Labor, read on the date given. It is written for New York; the timing, the evidence and the phrasing are general, while anything touching pay law varies by state and by country and is worth checking where you are.

What this tower will not do

It will not give you a percentage to ask for. The department says to check what comparable roles pay and make sure the request “isn’t out of line”, which is a better instruction than any number a stranger could give you.

It will not pretend asking always works. What to do when the answer is no is on this page because it is the more common outcome, and the follow-up question is where the value is.

And it will not sell you negotiation coaching — which, given that one of the pages ranking above this one is published by a credit card company, is worth saying about this subject in particular. What holds instead is simple: the timing, the evidence list, the worked sentence and the rule against negotiating by message are all quoted from a state labour department, with the date it was read.