When do salary surveys open each year?

The P50 team

Published October 2, 2026

Last updated October 5, 2026

Most U.S. salary surveys open for data collection in late winter and close in late spring, with a data effective date near March 1 or April 1. You should start preparing the fall before, so your pay file is clean and ready when the window opens. Results then come out in summer or early fall, just in time for next year's budget.

That is the whole cycle in two sentences. The rest of this article walks through it quarter by quarter, so you know what to do and when.

The yearly rhythm most surveys follow

Salary surveys run on a calendar, not on demand. A survey needs every employer to send data at about the same time, so it opens a window, collects, cleans the data, and publishes. Then it repeats the next year.

For most U.S. surveys that calendar looks like this:

Late winter to spring: the participation window. You submit your pay file.
A data effective date in that window: usually March 1 or April 1. More on why below.
Summer or early fall: results are published to participants.
Fall: employers use the results to set pay ranges and budgets for the coming year.

You can see this pattern on the big survey firms' own pages. One large firm lists its 2026 U.S. survey window as open on March 2, 2026 and closed on May 4, 2026, covering its main general-industry database and a set of industry surveys (participation dates). Another lays out its guidance by quarter: prepare in Q1, participate in Q2, and get the latest data in Q3 (participation calendar). Regional surveys follow a similar shape. One regional employer association's 2026 survey took data from January through March 2026 and published results in May 2026 (association survey dates).

The dates shift a few weeks from survey to survey, and they shift a little from year to year. The shape does not change.

The government runs on the same kind of clock

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes wage data by occupation through its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, or OEWS. It is the free public data many small employers start with, and it has a yearly rhythm too.

OEWS data are published once a year with a May reference date (BLS). BLS says estimates are generally released in late March or early April of the following year (BLS FAQ). The May 2025 figures, for example, came out on May 15, 2026 (BLS news release). So by the time you read OEWS numbers, they are about a year old. That is normal for government data, and it is one reason employers join private surveys as well.

Why the effective date matters

Every survey picks one day and asks you to report pay "as of" that day. If the date is March 1, you report what each employee earned on March 1, not what they earned in January and not what they will earn after the April raise cycle.

This matters because the point of a survey is comparison. If one company reports January pay and another reports June pay, the gap between them is partly a timing gap, not a market gap. A shared effective date removes that problem. Everyone's numbers describe the same moment, so a P50 (median) for a job means something.

It also tells you when to pull your data. Export your pay file as of the effective date, then spend the window checking it. Our methods page explains how the effective date feeds into the numbers you get back: How we calculate.

What to do each quarter

Here is the year as a simple table. The months are typical, not exact. Check the dates for the survey you join.

When	What to do
October to December	Register. Decide which surveys to join. Check that your HRIS job titles are current and that each job has a short description.
January	Build and clean your pay file. Match your jobs to the survey's job list.
February	Final checks. Confirm headcount, fix outliers, confirm the file is ready to send.
March to early May	Submit during the window, as of the effective date. Answer any follow-up questions from the survey team.
June to September	Results arrive. Read them, compare your pay to the market, and flag jobs that are far from the median.
October to December	Use the results to build next year's pay budget and ranges. Then register again.

Fall: register and get your titles in order

Most of the work that makes a survey easy happens before the window opens. Register in the fall so you get the reminders and the job list early. Decide which surveys you will join. Then open your HRIS and look at your job titles with fresh eyes. If "Accountant II" and "Staff Accountant" are the same job at your company, decide now which one you will report. If you are new to surveys, What is a salary survey? is a good place to start.

January: build the pay file

A pay file is a simple spreadsheet: one row per employee, with job, base pay, location, and a few other fields. January is the right month to build it, because you have the whole quarter to fix problems. Our step-by-step guide covers the columns, the common mistakes, and how to match jobs: How to build a pay file.

February: final checks

Pull a fresh export, compare it to January's, and look for anything odd: hourly rates converted to annual the same way for everyone, no terminated employees, no duplicate rows, no pay that is ten times what it should be because of a typo. Confirm who will submit the file and that they can log in.

March to early May: submit

Submit early in the window if you can. Survey teams get busy near the deadline, and an early file gives them time to ask you questions while you still remember the answers. If you join more than one survey, build the file once and send it to all of them. Most surveys ask for the same core fields, so the extra work is usually a column or two.

Summer: read the results

Results usually land between June and September. Go job by job, compare your pay to P25, P50, and P75, and write down which jobs are far from the market and why. How to read P25, P50, and P75 walks through this. To see what a report looks like before you join, see our sample report.

Fall: use the results

By October, you are planning next year's pay budget. This is where the survey earns its keep. Use the medians to set or adjust ranges, decide where to put your merit dollars, and build a case for any jobs that need a bigger fix. Then register for next year, and the cycle starts again.

A note on your data

Your pay file sits with the survey for a few months between submission and results. Before you join any survey, read how they handle your data: who can see it, how it is combined with other employers' data, and what happens to it after. Our promise is here: Your data.

Where P50 fits

P50 follows the same calendar as the big surveys, so it fits into the same quarter-by-quarter plan above. Registration is open now, data collection runs March 1 to May 3, 2027, data is reported as of March 1, 2027, and reports go out in summer 2027. Employers who register before March 1, 2027 are founding participants.

P50 is a free salary survey for employers. Registration for the 2027 survey is open now, and data collection runs March 1 to May 3, 2027. Register for free.