Source: https://deftridge.com/rates/methodology/ Title: How Deftridge rates are built | Deftridge Summary: Every Deftridge rate starts from official wage statistics for the role and place, aged to October 2026. The rate is on every task, before you apply. Rates · **Updated November 3, 2026** # 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](https://deftridge.com/team/catherine-doyle/), Head of Rates and Data · Data reviewed by [Ben Hargreaves](https://deftridge.com/team/ben-hargreaves/) · Edited by [Helena Voss](https://deftridge.com/team/helena-voss/) · Published 1 November 2026 ## 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. The assumptions - **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. | Source | Publisher | Year | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024 | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | May 2024 | U.S. government work, public domain | | Job Bank wages, open data release of 19 Nov 2025 | Employment and Social Development Canada | 2023-2024 (Labour Force Survey), 2024 (Survey of Employment, Payroll and Hours), 2021 Census for annual-wage occupations | Open Government Licence - Canada | | Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2026 provisional: Table 14.6a and Table 3.6a (hourly pay excluding overtime) | Office for National Statistics | 2026 (provisional, April 2026 pay period) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | | Structure of earnings survey 2022: earn_ses22_14 (mean hourly earnings by occupation) and earn_ses_hourly (median and deciles) | Eurostat | 2022 (reference year of the survey, published 2024-2026) | Eurostat reuse policy (CC BY 4.0) | | BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and Colorado through the BLS public API) | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | May 2025 | U.S. government work, public domain | | Employment Cost Index, wages and salaries, private industry management, professional and related occupations (CIU2020000100000I) | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | 2026 Q3 | U.S. government work, public domain | | Labour cost index by NACE Rev. 2 activity, wages and salaries, quarterly (lc_lci_r2_q), NACE K-N, falling back to B-S | Eurostat | 2026 Q2 | CC BY 4.0 | | Average weekly earnings, whole economy, total pay excluding arrears (KAB9) | Office for National Statistics | 2026 (to August) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | | Employee wages by industry, monthly (table 14-10-0063-01), average hourly wage rate, all employees | Statistics Canada | to 2026-09 | Statistics Canada Open Licence | | ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates (through frankfurter.dev) | European Central Bank | 2022 average and Oct 2026 | ECB reuse policy | | Verdiensterhebung: gross monthly pay without special payments of full-time employees by occupation (KldB 2010), April 2025 (table 62361-03), paid weekly hours (62361-04) and nominal wage index (62361-b01), Statistischer Bericht Verdienste, 2nd quarter 2026 | Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis) | April 2025 | Data licence Germany, attribution 2.0 (dl-de/by-2-0) | | Sozialversicherungspflichtige Bruttoarbeitsentgelte (Bruttomonatsentgelte of full-time employees by KldB 2010 group), 31 December 2025, table 5.1 | Bundesagentur fuer Arbeit, Statistik | Dec 2025 | Statistik der Bundesagentur fuer Arbeit, source citation required | | Pay ranges stated in real job postings, 45 days to the end of October 2026 (freehire.me aggregate; pracuj.pl, reed.co.uk, Job Bank Canada and the Arbeitnow job board API, https://www.arbeitnow.com) | freehire.me, pracuj.pl, reed.co.uk, Job Bank (Government of Canada), Arbeitnow, posting employers | Sep-Oct 2026 | personal / non-commercial API (risk accepted, Q-10); only aggregates are kept, no postings, employers or URLs | ## 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.