What Are Your Salary Expectations? How to Answer in 2026

There is one question in the hiring process where a single sentence can cost you more money than an entire year of good performance reviews will earn back. It usually arrives early, often in a form field, and it is almost always phrased casually.

"What are your salary expectations?"

Most advice on this is a decade out of date, because the ground under the question has moved. Pay transparency laws have changed who has to show their cards first, and salary history bans have made the old deflection scripts unnecessary in much of the market. Here is how to answer it now.

Why the question is asked at all

It helps to know what the person asking actually wants, because it is rarely what candidates assume.

A recruiter asking early is almost always doing budget triage. They have an approved range. They have a stack of candidates. They are trying to avoid spending four rounds on someone who will decline the offer, which is a genuine waste of everyone's time including yours.

A hiring manager asking late is doing something different: calibrating an offer they already intend to make.

Neither is trying to trick you. But the structural fact remains that whoever names a number first gives up information, and the number you name will anchor everything that follows. Anchoring is not a negotiation trick you can opt out of by being reasonable. It is simply how the subsequent conversation gets framed.

First: check whether they already told you

Before you craft anything, look at the job posting again. In a growing number of places, the employer is legally required to publish a good-faith pay range.

Coverage now includes Colorado, California, New York State and New York City, Washington, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, and others, with the EU Pay Transparency Directive requiring member states to give applicants pay information ahead of interview from 2026. The specific obligations differ by jurisdiction, but the practical effect is the same: many postings now carry the range, and many candidates never scroll down to look.

If the range is published, the question is largely answered for you. You are no longer guessing; you are positioning yourself inside a stated band. Say so:

“

"I saw the posted range of 95 to 120. Based on the scope described and my experience with X, I'd be targeting the upper half of that. Does that fit what you had in mind for this level?"

That answer is specific, cooperative, evidence-based, and does not concede the top of the band.

If the range is not published

Then you have three legitimate moves, in order of preference.

1. Turn the question around, once

This is reasonable, extremely common, and rarely resented when it is done pleasantly and only once:

“

"Happy to talk numbers. Since you'll have a budgeted range for this role, could you share it and I'll tell you if I'm in the right area?"

Many recruiters will simply tell you. Their goal is filtering, and the range does that faster than your number does. If they share it, you have converted the question into the transparent case above.

2. Give a researched range, anchored upward

If they decline, or ask again, give a range. Not a point number, not a refusal.

“

"Based on what I'm seeing for this scope in this market, I'm looking at 95 to 110, and I'd want to understand the whole package before settling anywhere in that."

Three rules for that range:

• Make the bottom a number you would genuinely accept. The bottom is the only part of your range the other side hears as real. Never state a floor you would turn down, because you will be offered it.
• Keep it tight. A 15 to 20 percent spread reads as researched. A 60 to 120 spread reads as no idea.
• Attach it to the market and the scope, not to your history. "For this scope, in this market" is defensible. "I currently earn X" is not, and in many places they cannot legally ask.

3. Defer, briefly, if it is genuinely too early

Only if you truly do not yet know the scope:

“

"I'd like to understand the scope a bit better before putting a number on it. Can we come back to it once I've spoken with the team?"

Use this at most once. Deferring twice reads as evasive and can get you filtered out entirely, which is the outcome nobody wants.

What about the form field?

Increasingly the question is not asked by a person at all. It is a required field in the application, sometimes a free-text box, sometimes a dropdown, sometimes a hard minimum and maximum.

Handle it like this:

• Free text. Enter a range, in the same tight, researched form as above. If the box will not accept a range, enter the number at the middle-to-upper part of your target.
• Dropdown or bands. Pick the band containing your target, not the one below it to seem affordable. These are used as filters; picking low does not make you a bargain, it makes you a lower-band candidate.
• "Negotiable" or 0. Avoid. Some systems treat it as a literal value and it can sort you strangely. Where a number is required, give one.

Doing the research, quickly

A range is only credible if it is grounded. Twenty minutes gets you most of the way:

1. Published ranges for the same title in the same city. The transparency laws mean comparable postings now carry real bands. This is the single best source because it is what employers have actually committed to in writing.
2. Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, and Payscale for a sanity check, weighted toward the most recent entries.
3. The scope of the actual posting. Team size, whether it is a first hire, budget ownership, on-call. Scope moves pay more than title does.
4. Location rules. Ask whether pay is location-adjusted for remote roles. It frequently is, and it changes the number materially.

Total compensation, not just base

Before you accept any number as good, ask what else is in the package. Base is the most visible component and often not the most valuable one:

• Bonus, and whether it is guaranteed, discretionary, or historically paid
• Equity, and specifically the strike price, vesting schedule, and current preferred price
• Pension or 401(k) match, which is real money and frequently ignored
• Health cover and what it actually costs you per month
• Paid leave, and whether "unlimited" comes with a stated minimum
• Remote and location policy, since a return-to-office change is a pay cut in commuting hours

A slightly lower base with a serious pension match and genuine remote flexibility often beats a higher base without them.

The mistakes that cost the most

Answering with your current salary. It is not relevant to the value of this role, and in many jurisdictions employers are barred from asking. Redirect to market and scope.

Naming a point number to seem decisive. A single number can only be negotiated downward.

Going low to be safe. Under-pricing does not read as humility. It reads as a signal about the level you belong at, and it sets the base every future raise is calculated from.

Treating the first offer as final. It is a starting position often enough that accepting it immediately leaves money on the table. A polite, evidenced counter is expected.

If you get to the offer stage, the negotiation scripts that actually work cover the wording for the counter itself.

The short version

Check the posting first, because the range is often already there. If it is not, ask for theirs once. If they will not share, give a tight researched range whose bottom you would genuinely accept, tied to market and scope rather than to your history. In a form field, always give a real number. And judge the result on the whole package, not the base.