How Often Should You Get a Raise?

About once a year. That is the rhythm most employers work to, and it is the rhythm you should plan around: one meaningful increase every 12 months, usually landing at your annual review. Go much longer than that without a raise and you are not standing still — at current inflation, you are going backwards.

This page sets out the normal timeline, the situations where asking sooner is reasonable, and the real cost of waiting, in dollars. If you already know you are overdue, skip to the numbers and then run your own with our pay raise calculator.

Quick answer: Expect a raise roughly every 12 months. Asking in your first six months is usually too soon, unless the job has changed materially. At 18 months without an increase you are overdue for a conversation, and at two years your pay has almost certainly lost ground to inflation — on $60,000, one flat year at 3.7% inflation costs about $2,141 of purchasing power.

Why once a year is the standard

Raises follow budgets, and budgets are set once a year. Before each cycle, employers decide how much the total pay bill can grow, and managers divide that pool among their teams. For 2026, Mercer’s U.S. compensation planning survey put that pool at 3.5% of payroll in total increases, with 3.2% for merit increases specifically — almost identical to what employers actually paid in 2025.

That annual cycle explains most of the timing advice you will ever hear. Your review is when the money is allocated, so a raise request lands best when it reaches your manager before the pool is divided up, not after. It also explains why off-cycle raises are rare: outside the annual round, your manager usually has to find the money from somewhere else in the budget, which takes a stronger reason than “I would like one.”

One more boundary worth knowing: in most jobs there is no legal right to an annual raise. Outside minimum-wage rules and anything written into a contract or collective agreement, the yearly increase is custom, not law. That is exactly why the timing and the case you make matter.

The normal timeline, situation by situation

Your situation	Normal timing	What to do
New job	First raise at the 12-month review	Asking before six months is too soon in almost every case. Build a record first.
Standard annual cycle	Every 12 months	Raise the subject two to three months before your review, while budgets are still being set.
Promotion	With the promotion, in whatever month it lands	Confirm the pay increase before accepting the new title. The average promotion increase employers budgeted for 2026 was 8.7%.
Role grew, title did not	Off-cycle, when the scope changed	You do not have to wait for the annual round. A materially bigger job is the strongest off-cycle reason there is.
18 months, no raise	Overdue	Start the conversation now, with numbers: market rate for your role and what inflation has done since your last increase.
Two years or more, no raise	A pay cut in real terms	Ask formally, get a date and criteria in writing, and quietly check what the market would pay you elsewhere.

What waiting actually costs

“No raise this year” sounds neutral. It is not, because prices did not stay flat while your salary did. U.S. consumer prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months to September 2026 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Run that against a $60,000 salary that did not move:

• After one flat year, your $60,000 buys what $57,859 bought a year earlier. You have lost $2,141 of purchasing power — a real pay cut of about 3.6%, even though the number on your payslip never changed.
• After two flat years at the same inflation rate, the same salary buys what $55,795 used to buy. That is $4,205 gone, a cumulative real cut of about 7.0%.
• The compounding cuts the other way, too. A $60,000 salary with a 3.5% raise each year reaches $71,261 by year five. Miss just the first of those raises and, with the same 3.5% every year after, you reach year five at $68,851 instead. One skipped year is never paid back on its own, because every later percentage increase is calculated on the lower base.

Add it up over five years and the gap is stark: steady 3.5% annual raises pay $33,009 more in total than a salary frozen at $60,000. That is the real answer to “how often” — every missed cycle is not one year of lost money, it is a permanently lower starting point for all the years after it. Our Future Salary Calculator runs this projection on your own salary, and the guide to real raises vs inflation shows how to work out whether a raise you did get actually kept up.

When asking sooner than a year makes sense

The annual cycle is the default, not a rule. Ask earlier when something concrete has changed:

• You were promoted, or your role expanded materially — more reports, a bigger budget, responsibilities that were not in the job you were hired for. This is a market adjustment for a different job, not an early annual raise.
• Your pay has fallen behind the market. If current advertisements for your role, in your area, pay noticeably more than you earn, that gap is the argument. Employers make market adjustments off-cycle precisely because annual budgets cannot fix them.
• A promised review or raise date passed. If a raise was agreed for a specific date and the date slipped, asking about it is not impatience — it is following up on a commitment. Reference the original agreement and ask for the new date.
• You have a competing offer. This works, and it is the riskiest route on this list. Only use a real offer, and only if you would genuinely take it, because some employers will simply wish you well.

When waiting is the better move

• You are in your first six months. Unless the job turned out to be something quite different from what was agreed, you have not yet built the record a raise is argued from.
• A recent review flagged specific problems. Fix those first, visibly, then ask. Asking while the flagged issues are still open hands your manager the easiest possible “no.”
• You already received an off-cycle increase recently. A second ask within months of a granted one needs a genuinely new reason, not the same case repeated.
• There is a company-wide freeze with a credible date. If raises are frozen for everyone and a review date has been named, spend the wait building your evidence — and get the date in writing. A freeze with no date is not a plan; treat it like the two-year case above.

Signs you are overdue

Tick two or more of these and the conversation is already late:

• It has been 18 months or more since your pay last changed.
• Your job description would not cover half of what you actually do.
• Advertised salaries for your role have moved past yours.
• New joiners at your level are rumored — or known — to start near or above your pay.
• Your last raise did not cover inflation, and neither did the one before it. Check with the Cost of Living Raise Calculator.
• Reviews keep going well, but pay is never actually discussed in them.

How to start, if it’s been too long

1. Work out your real position first. Two numbers: what inflation has done to your pay since your last raise, and what your role pays now. Our data on the average raise percentage gives you the current benchmarks to quote.
2. Pick a specific figure. Not “a raise” — a number, and the evidence under it. The guide on how much of a raise to ask for walks through setting it by situation.
3. Ask before budgets lock. In many workplaces the increase pool is divided weeks before review meetings happen. Asking two to three months ahead puts your case in front of your manager while there is still money to allocate.
4. If the answer is no, leave with a date and criteria. “What would need to be true at the next review, and when is it?” A no with specifics is workable. A vague no, repeated at the next cycle, tells you the raise is probably coming from a different employer — in which case, compare any offer properly with the Job Offer Comparison Calculator.

Sources

Mercer, QuickPulse U.S. Compensation Planning Survey, October 2025 (2026 budgets: 3.2% merit, 3.5% total increases; 8.7% average promotion increase) — mercer.com. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index, September 2026 (CPI-U up 3.7% over 12 months), released October 14, 2026 — bls.gov. Worked examples use a $60,000 salary throughout; the two-year figure assumes inflation stayed at 3.7% in the second year, and all projections assume raises land at the start of each year.

Related reading: if a raise still left you behind rising prices, our guide to a cost of living raise explains how that increase is worked out and when it applies on top of the annual cycle.

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