US government salary data from the Occupational Employment Statistics survey is considered to be low (conservative) for the following reasons. Wage ceiling: The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics OES dataset collects wage data in bands, but the top category is open-ended, defined as “$80 per hour and above” or $166,400 per year. Therefore, high-end outliers do not exist in the federal database despite their occurrence in the real world. This brings average/means down, since the highest salary rate is recorded as $80 per hour. Yet in actuality, many US employees receive $100, $200, $300 and up per hour. Time frame: In addition, this survey captures data on one-third of US organizations each year. (In total it covers 1.2 million establishments listed in State Unemployment Insurance (UI) files.) Updating 400,000 entries once every 3 years means that upsurges in competitive rates are missed. This makes the OES survey considerably out of date compared to almost any private survey. Org