HR Pros Expect $42K More Than What They’re Getting Paid

Employees across all industries are looking for a much bigger salary than their employers are offering — and HR pros are no exception. 

HR professionals face a staggering $42,596 gap between what they expect to earn in their role and what their industry actually offers, new data from recruiting site JobLeads finds. For its analysis, JobLeads looked at 811,000 active job postings and 245,000 applicants' salary expectations from July-December 2025. HR pros on average expect to make $133,322, while the average salary offered is $90,725. 

That’s a bigger expectation gap than the U.S. average, which falls at $33,332. This is a “particular irony” given the hand the HR pros play in setting salary for other roles, JobLeads analysts said. 

“HR pros are the people who play a big part in setting the salary bands for other roles, yet they tend to misprice their own roles by as much as $42,596,” said Jan Hendrik von Ahlen, JobLeads’ managing director and career expert. 

HR’s salary expectation is likely tied to their intense workload and responsibilities, which has been growing as of late. 

“We can see that now HR functions have really expanded: often, an HR specialist takes care of [inclusion and equity], people analytics, building AI processes in hiring and people management, and more, so many HR pros are now benchmarking themselves as highly strategic. And they are not wrong,” von Ahlen said. “However, many employers are still budgeting these roles as “support functions.’ ” 

More recently, HR leaders have been at the core of making difficult organizational decisions, which in part include how to manage soaring health care costs, retaining important benefits for their workers, and figuring out if pay raises are feasible — all while economic volatility is impacting organizations’ bottom lines. 

Newsletter: Subscribe to Total Rewards  

Valuation Crisis for HR? 

The data finding a substantial gap between expected salaries and actual salaries “indicates a certain valuation crisis for HR,” von Ahlen said. 

“Such a disconnect between expectations and reality leads to longer job searches and rejected offers,” he said. 

Also, considering that the HR department is heavily female-dominated, and our earlier research shows women already set expectations lower than men, the problem lies deeper structurally than the headlines might suggest, von Ahlen added. 

Previous data from JobLeads found that women’s salary expectations are 9.5% lower than those of men. 

And a report from Seattle-based compensation firm Payscale in March found that the uncontrolled gender pay gap in the United States has widened in the past year, erasing past progress toward equal pay and putting more pressure on employers to help close the gap. Women now earn $0.82 for every dollar earned by men, down from $0.83 in 2025. That gap translates to $14,300 less per year in median pay, totaling more than $1 million in lost earnings over a 40‑year career, Payscale found. 

Article: Here’s What Employees Say Is a Fair Annual Pay Increase

Pay Falling Short 

In general, most employees feel like what they are actually earning is well below what they should be making. Virtually all job applicants (99%) expect more than the market offers. 

“We are not that surprised by the gap itself, but more by the scale,” von Ahlen said. 

Those high expectations — coupled with harsh reality — arrive as pay raises have come in fairly flat over the past year. At the same time, high inflation is shaking employees’ purchasing power and financial confidence. Gas prices, which have surpassed $4.50 per gallon on average, have pushed inflation to a three-year high, with inflation now outpacing wage growth.  

Those persistent high costs and broader economic uncertainty have brought employee financial confidence to its lowest level in 14 years, according to recent MetLife data.