A resident reads that a city official just received a large promotion and raise. The number alone doesn't say much — a big raise can be entirely typical for that title, or well outside the norm. Without a peer comparison, it's just a headline.
The resident searches the official's name in CompensationAtlas, which shows the full career trajectory — every title change and salary adjustment since 2016, not just the most recent one.
CompensationAtlas surfaces how that trajectory stacks up against peers holding the same or similar titles in the same department, over the same stretch of time.
The raise itself is a number. Whether it's normal is a comparison — and the comparison is what most coverage skips.
In this case, the raise turns out to track closely with the standard promotion path for that title — unremarkable once peers are accounted for, which is itself a useful and often under-reported finding.
Residents and taxpayers evaluating a specific public payroll headline, and local journalists who want peer context before running a story on a single raise.