How wide should a salary range be? Range spread by job level

Most professional salary ranges use a spread of 30 to 40 percent, meaning the top of the range sits 30 to 40 percent above the bottom. Hourly and entry-level roles run narrower, around 25 to 30 percent. Senior and executive roles run wider, 40 to 60 percent, because pay for those jobs varies more from one person to the next. The spread is the distance from the minimum to the maximum, not from the midpoint, and it is the single number that decides how much room a band gives you.

The width of a band is a design choice with consequences. Too narrow and you cannot reward someone who grows in a role without pushing them over the top. Too wide and the band stops controlling anything: two people doing the same job land 80,000 apart and nobody can say why. This guide covers the standard spreads by level, the formula, the midpoint math that turns a market rate into a real minimum and maximum, and the mistakes that make a band useless. You can build a banded range on public market data with the salary band builder in a minute, then come back for the reasoning.

The standard spreads by job level

There is no legal width for a salary range, but comp practice has settled on a fairly tight set of norms. The reason lower-level jobs get narrower bands is simple: the work is more defined, so two people in it are worth roughly the same, and a tight band keeps pay predictable. Senior work is the opposite. Two VPs of Engineering can be worth very different amounts, so their band has to stretch to hold both. Width is only one of three numbers that hold a grid together, and the other two, midpoint progression and overlap, are covered in salary structure design.

These are working norms, not rules. Pick one spread per grade and keep it consistent, because a structure where every band is a different width is impossible to administer.

The range spread formula

Range spread is the percentage gap between the top and bottom of a band. The formula is:

One point that trips people up: the spread is measured from the minimum, not the midpoint. A 40 percent spread does not mean 40 percent above and below the middle. It means the maximum is 40 percent above the minimum, which puts the midpoint a little below the mathematical center of the two dollar figures.

Building the min and max around a market midpoint

In practice you do not start with the minimum. You start with the midpoint, set it to the market rate you want to pay for a fully proficient person in the role, then build the edges around it. The midpoint is usually the market median (P50) or whatever percentile your compensation philosophy targets, such as the 60th percentile for a role you compete hard to fill.

To hit a target spread, use these midpoint multipliers:

• 30% spread: minimum at 87% of midpoint, maximum at 113% of midpoint.
• 40% spread: minimum at 83% of midpoint, maximum at 117% of midpoint.
• 50% spread: minimum at 80% of midpoint, maximum at 120% of midpoint.

So a role with a market midpoint of 100,000 and a 40 percent target spread gives you a band of about 83,000 to 117,000. Round to clean numbers your recruiters can quote, and you have a range that is anchored to real data at the middle and defensible at both edges. Where you then place a given person inside that band is what range penetration and compa ratio measure.

How wide is too wide

The failure mode that shows up most in small companies is the band that is technically a range but functionally a shrug. A 60,000 to 300,000 posting is not a band; it is an admission that you have not decided what the job is worth. Three things go wrong when a band is too wide. Hiring managers stop using it, because a range that permits anything guides nothing. Pay compression and equity gaps creep in, because two people in the same job drift far apart with no documented reason, which is exactly the pattern a pay equity audit flags. And in a growing number of states, a posted range that wide is not legal.

California has defined a compliant pay scale since 2023 as a good faith estimate of what the employer actually expects to pay, and Massachusetts and Colorado apply the same reasonableness standard. A band so wide it could never be a genuine estimate invites a penalty. New Jersey may go further and put a number on it: the rules its labor department proposed in September 2025, still not adopted as of July 2026, would cap a posted maximum at 60 percent above the minimum, so $100,000 to $160,000 would pass and $100,000 to $200,000 would not. See the New Jersey pay transparency law for where that stands. The pay transparency laws now in force are, in effect, a legal cap on how wide your posted ranges can get.

A note on contractors and one-off hires

Bands are built for employees you plan to keep and grow. If you are setting a rate for a single project or bringing on contract help instead of a full-time hire, the range logic does not apply the same way: you are pricing a deliverable, not building a career path, so a market rate for the scope of work matters more than a band with room to grow. Keep the two exercises separate so contractor rates do not quietly reset your employee bands.

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