Resource Center / Reports and Surveys / Salary and Jobs Report 2025-26

Salary and Jobs Report 2025-26

Privacy, AI Governance and Digital Responsibility

Executive Summary

This report presents data to help professionals and organizations across the privacy, AI governance and digital responsibility domains to benchmark salaries and compensation. The full version of the report, available only to IAPP members, can be accessed here.

Published: August 2025

Contributor:

Saz Kanthasamy

Joe Jones

Full Report (Members-only)

The financial wellbeing of employees is currently in flux. Global salaries and job security are directly impacted by interconnected political and economic factors.

The current geopolitical climate and evolving economic policies have been exerting significant influence on salary budgets and onward compensation available to employees. The era of post-COVID-19 pandemic salary growth may be slowing with labor costs now potentially inflated due to persistent inflationary pressures and a competitive talent market. Geoeconomic fragmentation and geopolitical tensions are likely to translate into business models transforming to account for trade restrictions, supply chain disruptions and broader policy uncertainty.

This highlights why now, more than ever, it is vital for professionals to make smart career choices. Salary and compensation are crucially important. However, talking about pay remains tricky. A variety of reasons persist — whether it’s the social stigma around salary discussions, barriers to trustworthy dialogue, regulations preventing collusion, the desire for confidentiality over pay or strategic ambiguity by organizations to maintain competitiveness.

Since 2003, the IAPP has conducted a salary survey to help privacy professionals benchmark their salaries. This year’s report continues the tradition of providing insights that help professionals and organizations benchmark salaries and total compensation, recognize the value of certifications, obtain a temperature check in the form of job satisfaction and likelihood of finding another job, and more.

We asked our global community to complete a 27-question salary survey. Over the course of six weeks from March to April 2025, more than 1,600 people from over 60 countries responded. This is the largest and most globally diverse response yet.

Core responsibilities of respondents

New to this year’s report is the inclusion of AI governance professional salaries as well as insights and analysis on the impact to salary of working on other digital governance domains, such as cybersecurity law. The expanded scope of the report, consistent with the IAPP’s mission, now serves a broader array of professions, all of which are critical to the governance of digital technology.

In this report, base salary refers to regular salary or wages, not including bonuses or other types of additional compensation. Total financial compensation refers to the base salary plus bonuses and other types of extra compensation. Neither base salary nor total compensation include the value of other employee benefits, such as health insurance policies.

Key takeaways

The impact of digital governance

Half of all respondents working in privacy and AI governance earn more than USD169,700 while half of respondents solely working in a single domain of privacy or AI governance earn less than USD123,000 and USD151,800, respectively.

Role-specific salary ranges

Those working in the technology sector, either in legal and compliance roles or in technical AI governance roles, earned the highest median salaries relative to other respondents at USD205,000 and USD221,000 respectively.

Total financial compensation package

Almost 7 in 10 professionals received a bonus, making this the most popular form of additional compensation among respondents. This figure rose to 72% of respondents when only considering those based in North America, but this number fell to 67% of respondents in Europe.

Nonfinancial benefits

Health benefits were enjoyed by at least 88% of those working in medium and large organizations. 61% of respondents reported they currently work from home more than they work from the office.

Impact of certification

This year’s data identified that at least 77% of surveyed respondents held at least one IAPP certification, while 39% of respondents held multiple IAPP certifications. In general, median salary was higher for respondents with any one IAPP qualification. Those holding multiple qualifications yielded further increases in median salary. While these results are not necessarily meant to prove a direct cause-and-effect correlation, it is reasonable to draw a general conclusion that employees with additional qualifications tend to be more valuable to their organizations.

Movers and shakers

The relationship between how content employees are in their current roles, the key drivers that entice individuals to seek new opportunities and the prevalence of active job hunting can reveal several insights into the dynamics at play in the workforce. Among the top motivating factors causing respondents to seek new jobs, 71% said they would move jobs for a pay raise, 43% would move jobs for career progression reasons, and 27% would move jobs for fully remote work opportunities.

Additional resources