A poll of 71,000 employees has found that people generally aren't that good at figuring out how their compensation stacks up against the market as a whole, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. Of people who were being paid above market rates, 35 percent believed they were actually underpaid, while 45 percent believed they were making about average. Similarly, among people who were being paid the market rate, 64 percent believed they were making less than the average for their position, while 6 percent said they were being paid more. 

The one area where people were highly accurate in assessing their pay relative to the market were those who actually were underpaid: of those who were compensated below market rates, 83 percent correctly identified that they were making less than average. By contrast, 14 percent thought they were being compensated at the market rate, while 3 percent thought they were being paid at a higher than average rate.