Building Your First Salary Range With No Compensation Background

You Have a Posting Due Friday and No Idea Where to Start

It is Wednesday afternoon. A hiring manager just dropped a job description in your inbox — "Marketing Coordinator, ASAP" — with a note at the bottom: "Can you add the salary range? The lawyer says we need one." You are the HR team. There is no compensation analyst, no comp committee, no subscription to a benchmarking platform that costs more than your monthly payroll software. There is a BLS website your predecessor bookmarked and a blank spreadsheet.

You are not doing anything wrong by being here. The majority of U.S. companies are small: the U.S. Small Business Administration reported 36.2 million small businesses in 2025 — 99.9% of all U.S. businesses — employing 62.3 million people. Most of them do not have a dedicated comp function. And yet pay-transparency laws are now in effect in 16 states plus Washington D.C., with Delaware joining in 2027, according to Paycor and Nesco Resource (2026). That gap — no comp background, real legal obligation — is exactly the situation this article addresses.

By the time you finish reading, you will be able to build a defensible salary range for any role using publicly available government wage data, document your methodology so it holds up to scrutiny, and post it with confidence before Friday.

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What a Salary Range Actually Is (and the Three Numbers That Matter)

Before you open any data source, get clear on what you are building. A salary range is a structured pay band with three anchor points:

• Minimum — the lowest the organization will pay for a fully qualified, newly hired person in this role.
• Midpoint (also called the market median) — the central reference point of the band, typically anchored to the 50th percentile of market wage data for comparable workers. The market median is the wage below which half of all workers in that occupation and geography earn; it is your primary anchor.
• Maximum — the ceiling, representing full mastery of the role, typically reserved for long-tenured or exceptional performers.

The range spread is how wide the band is, expressed as a percentage of the midpoint (or, in some conventions, of the minimum). A narrow spread — say, 20–30% — signals a role with limited advancement room; a wide spread — 50–80% — signals a role with a long skill runway, common in technical or senior positions. You can read more about how to calibrate range spreads in our guide to range spread.

Two additional terms you will encounter once people are in the band: compa-ratio (an employee's actual pay divided by the band midpoint, expressed as a percentage — 100% means they are paid exactly at market) and range penetration (how far through the band an employee sits, from 0% at minimum to 100% at maximum). You do not need these to build your first range, but you will want them the moment your attorney asks whether your incumbents are paid equitably within the band.

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Step 1 — Find the Right Market Data Anchor

The most important decision in your first range-build is where to anchor the midpoint. For a compliant, defensible range, the right starting point is the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. BLS OEWS produces wage estimates annually for over 800 occupations from a sample of approximately 1.1 million establishments (BLS, May 2025). The data is public, free, and — critically — legally citable if enforcement ever asks how you set the number.

Here is how to find your anchor:

1. Go to bls.gov/oes. In the OES Data tab, search for your occupation by title or browse by major group.
2. Match the role to a SOC code (Standard Occupational Classification). "Marketing Coordinator" does not have its own code — it typically maps to Marketing Managers (SOC 11-2021) at a more senior level, or to Advertising and Promotions Managers, Market Research Analysts, or Marketing Specialists depending on the actual duties. Read the BLS occupational description carefully and pick the closest fit. This judgment call is your methodology — document which code you chose and why.
3. Pull the national median (50th percentile) first. For marketing managers (SOC 11-2021), the BLS OOH reports a national median of $161,030 as of May 2024. For most small businesses hiring a coordinator-level role, the national marketing manager median is a ceiling reference, not a midpoint — adjust down based on scope and seniority, and use a market analyst or specialist SOC if that better fits the actual job.
4. Next, pull a geographic wage estimate for your state or metro area if your jurisdiction requires it or if your labor market is meaningfully above or below the national average. BLS publishes state- and MSA-level OEWS data; the metro figure is almost always more accurate for a single-location hire.

Not sure how to read the OEWS tables? The guide to reading BLS OEWS data walks through exactly how to navigate the files and interpret the percentile columns.

A plain-language note on percentiles: the BLS 10th percentile is the wage below which 10% of workers in that occupation earn — it is roughly the entry-level floor in a given market. The 50th percentile (median) is the midpoint of the full distribution. The 90th percentile is the ceiling for most experienced workers. BLS OEWS reports five percentiles: 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th. Cite only the ones you actually look up — never fill in a percentile from memory.

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Step 2 — Set Your Midpoint and Calculate the Band

Once you have a market median for the right SOC code and geography, you are ready to calculate the band. Here is a worked example using round numbers so the arithmetic is clear — label it as a model when you document it internally.

Worked example (illustrative — substitute your actual BLS figures):

Suppose the BLS OEWS 50th-percentile wage for your target occupation and geography is $75,000 per year. You have decided this is your midpoint anchor. You choose a 40% range spread — a reasonable starting point for a mid-level individual-contributor role where skill development spans two to three years.

• Minimum = Midpoint ÷ (1 + half of spread) = $75,000 ÷ 1.20 = $62,500
• Maximum = Midpoint × (1 + half of spread) = $75,000 × 1.20 = $90,000

Your posted range: $62,500 – $90,000.

The same arithmetic, applied to a role with a wider skill ladder (say, a software developer role with a 60% spread), would produce a wider band. For software developers (SOC 15-1252), BLS OOH reports a national median of $133,080 as of May 2024, with a 10th percentile of $79,850 and a 90th percentile of $211,450 — a natural market spread of roughly 165% from floor to ceiling, which tells you immediately that a narrow band would not reflect reality for that occupation.

The point of this step is not to produce a perfect number. It is to produce a documented, method-based number — one you can explain in three sentences if your state labor department or your attorney asks. "We used the BLS OEWS 50th percentile for SOC [code] in [geography], May 2024 data, and applied a [X]% range spread" is a methodology. "We asked the hiring manager what he felt like paying" is not.

For a deeper walkthrough of the full range-building process, see how to build a salary range.

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Step 3 — Check What Your Jurisdiction Requires in the Posting Itself

Building the range is only half the job. What you post — and how — depends on where the role is. Pay-transparency laws vary significantly by state, and the details matter.

A few examples from the verified data:

• Colorado (Equal Pay for Equal Work Act): applies to employers with at least one Colorado employee; fines range from $500 to $10,000 per violation, each non-compliant posting treated as a separate violation (Colorado General Assembly, SB19-085, as amended Jan 1, 2024). Always confirm the current rule with the Colorado CDLE.
• New York State (Labor Law §194-B): private employers with four or more employees must include a salary or salary range in postings for roles performed at least in part in New York, effective September 17, 2023; penalties escalate up to $3,000 per violation (NY State DOL, 2023). Verify the current rule at NY State DOL.
• Washington State (Equal Pay and Opportunities Act): employers with 15 or more employees must disclose a wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits; as of July 27, 2025 amendments, statutory damages run $100–$5,000 per applicant plus attorney fees (Epstein Becker Green, 2025). Confirm with Washington L&I.
• Illinois (HB 3129, effective Jan 1, 2025): employers with 15 or more employees must include pay scale and benefits in postings; penalties escalate $500 / $2,500 / $10,000 for successive violations (Illinois DOL, 2025). Verify at Illinois DOL.

These are library figures — they are accurate to the sources cited, but pay-transparency rules change frequently. Before you post anything, confirm the current threshold, effective date, and penalty structure directly with the relevant state labor authority or with legal counsel.

What typically goes into a compliant posting varies too — some states require only the range, others require a description of benefits or total compensation. The article on what to include in a salary range posting covers the structural requirements in more detail.

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Step 4 — Document Your Methodology Before You Click Publish

This is the step most first-time range-builders skip, and it is the one that matters most when enforcement or litigation arrives.

Documentation does not need to be elaborate. A single internal document — a shared Google Doc, a note in your HRIS, a dated PDF — should record:

1. The role title and internal job ID for the posting.
2. The SOC code you chose and a one-sentence rationale for why it matches the role's primary duties.
3. The BLS OEWS dataset version (geography, reference year — e.g., "BLS OEWS, National, May 2024").
4. The percentile(s) you used (typically the 50th as the midpoint anchor; note if you adjusted for a local market using a state or metro file).
5. The range spread you applied and the reasoning (e.g., "40% spread for a mid-level individual-contributor role with a 2–3 year skill ladder").
6. The resulting band minimum, midpoint, and maximum.
7. The date the documentation was created and who created it.

Illinois law, for example, requires employers to retain pay-scale and posting information for each position for five years (Greenberg Traurig / Illinois DOL, 2024). Even where retention is not explicitly required, documentation is the difference between a defensible compliance posture and one your attorney cannot explain.

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Step 5 — Know What You Are Trading Off (and When a Tool Helps)

A spreadsheet and the BLS website can get you through your first range. The tradeoff is time and error risk: finding the right SOC code, downloading the right state file, computing the band arithmetic, formatting a compliant output for the posting, and dating the methodology — for one role, that might take two hours the first time. For five open roles across two states, it compounds quickly.

If you want to see how the manual approach compares to using purpose-built software, the comparison of Google Sheets versus salary range software lays out the tradeoffs honestly, including when the DIY path is the right call.

If you are ready to move faster, the Salary Range Builder Workbook is a structured Excel template that walks you through the same five steps above — SOC lookup, percentile entry, band calculation, methodology documentation — with the formulas pre-built and the BLS citation fields already labeled. It is a good fit if you want the control of a spreadsheet without starting from a blank page.

When the volume or the jurisdictional complexity grows, the software version handles the methodology, the geographic adjustments, and the compliance-formatted output in one place — from Essentials at $199/month with a 14-day free trial, no free tier.

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What "Defensible" Actually Means for a First-Timer

You do not need a certification in compensation to build a legally defensible salary range. You need a documented, method-based number anchored in publicly available government wage data, formatted to match your jurisdiction's posting requirements, and saved somewhere you can retrieve it if anyone asks.

That is achievable the first time, without a comp background, with the tools and data that already exist. The BLS OEWS is free. The methodology is five sentences. The documentation is a dated document.

What is not defensible is a range with no audit trail — one where the only answer to "how did you arrive at this number?" is silence or a hiring manager's intuition. That is the gap this process closes.

For a broader set of resources as your HR operations mature, the HR Operations Resource Hub collects the guides, templates, and compliance references most relevant to generalist teams building comp infrastructure from scratch.

Start with Friday's posting. Build the range. Document the method. Then do it again for the next one — and it will take half the time.

Ready to skip the blank-spreadsheet stage? Start a 14-day free trial of Salary Range Builder and build your first defensible range in the time it would have taken to find the right BLS file.