How rates are built
Every number on a rate page can be traced to an official source, a published adjustment and a published formula. This page lists them.
By Catherine Doyle, Head of Rates and Data · Data reviewed by Ben Hargreaves · Edited by Helena Voss · Published
From a wage survey to a published rate
1. Market wage. For a role and a place we take the hourly wage percentiles (10th, 25th, median, 75th, 90th) from the most local official source that has them: metro area first, then state, province or region, then the country. Roles are mapped to occupation codes (SOC, NOC, ISCO, KldB) by hand.
2. Ageing. Surveys are published with a lag of one to three years. We move each figure to October 2026 with the wage index of the same country (BLS Employment Cost Index, ONS average weekly earnings, Statistics Canada, Eurostat labour cost index, Destatis).
3. Calibration on posted pay. Pay ranges in current job listings are compared with the aged statistics for the same role and region. The measured ratio (kappa) corrects any systematic gap: 1.08 in the United States, 0.93 in Canada, 0.90 in the United Kingdom, 0.89 in Germany and 0.93 for the other EU countries until their own sample is large enough.
4. Contractor rate. Worker rate = market median × format factor × level factor, never below the median, never below the country floor and never above the country cap. Companies pay 15% on top of the worker rate.
- Format factor
- Regular role 1.45, Task bundle 1.50, One-off task 1.65, Expert hour 1.90, AI expert review 1.25
- Level factor
- Specialist 0.85, Senior 1.00, Manager 1.20, Director 1.45, Executive 1.75
- Floor per hour
- $35, CA$45, £28, €32
- Cap per hour
- $250, CA$320, £200, €230
These multipliers are Deftridge modelling assumptions, not market data.
Sources
Official statistics and the indices used to age them.
What the numbers are not
A rate page describes typical pay for the role in the place. It is not a quote, an offer or a guarantee, and a single task can sit above or below it for good reasons: scope, urgency, the seniority asked for or a company's budget.
Employee wage statistics exclude self-employment costs, so the contractor rate is higher by design. Countries without their own posted-pay sample use a group calibration, which is wider than a measured one. Where a state has no data the national distribution is used and the page says so.
Tax and legal points are general information. Ask a local adviser about your own case.