This video walks you through the basics of the Salary Calculator as well as the basic information you will need to create a salary report.

Watch our other How-To videos to learn more about ChurchSalary's compensation reports.

Below is a breakdown of each section that you will find in your Church Salary report! For Church Leaders, you can use the salary calculator to review the salaries for staff at your church and for Pastors or Staff Members at a church, you can use this report to advocate for a raise or negotiate a salary for your next job!

This section shows the nationwide summary of salaries - to produce these numbers, ChurchSalary analyzes survey data from real pastors and staff from across the country. The figures are a snapshot of salaries based on similar employees serving at similar churches.

There are three labels on the chart and these numbers are repeated below:

The median is simply the middle point—50 percent of salaries fall above or below this number.

The first and third quartiles show you the 25th and 75th percentiles. These figures are reproduced and labeled as the “salary range” below the chart. Quartiles divide the distribution graph into four segments just like there are four quarters in a dollar. So, 75 percent of salaries will be higher than the first quartile and 75 percent will be lower than the third quartile.

You can view our in-depth video about the Nationwide Salary Summary here.

ChurchSalary's powerful calculator uses these four variables to search for the closest possible employee matches in our database. The set of tables in the Localized Salary Recommendation section shows you the the average base salary, housing allowance, and total compensation for similar employees based on these four variables. In every full-time pastoral report, the ZIP code you enter is used to create a fingerprint of your community based on four variables:

In the Salary Comparison section, a nationwide dataset of similar employees—which forms the basis of the Nationwide Salary Summary section—is filtered into subsets based on four compensation factors.

All of the numbers in this section are averages based on each subset of similar employees (e.g., senior pastors with 6-10 years of experience).

You can view our In-depth video about Salary Comparison section here.

The Employment Profile section shows what a typical church employee can look like - the ChurchSalary database breaks down the demographics in this section regardless of church size or budget and the other factors below.

Each benefit is graphed as a percentage based on the factors below:

Using your ZIP code (and a second one if you enter it), ChurchSalary compares the cost of living in your location with the national average. This percentage is a relative measurement of the cost of 60 different goods and services in your ZIP code than the national average. Additionally, these ZIP codes are also used to display median household income (or MHI) data.

Read our in-depth article on COLI: Unpacking the Cost of Living.

ChurchSalary displays salary ranges for jobs that a similar employee could find in the larger marketplace in the Comparable Jobs. These salary ranges are based on compensation data reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for your Metropolitan Statistical Area or MSA.

Using your zip code, ChurchSalary pulls compensation data for jobs in your local economy. The salaries will correspond in the first and third quartile numbers that you find in the Nationwide Salary Summary section. These jobs and these numbers are based on real employees living within your MSA.

Learn more about the Comparable Jobs and the ranges within this section in this video.