Employees compare not only relative salaries, but also relative performance against that of co-workers.
That is, the advent of the new currency will make it suddenly easy to compare salaries earned in different countries for the same work.
There's a lot more to it than just comparing gross salaries.
It has been the only way to compare payrolls and average salaries of the 2000 season, say, with previous seasons.
Gary Bettman, the rookie commissioner, showed some bargaining savvy Tuesday night by releasing a table comparing salaries of officials in the four major team sports.
Among other controls, the study compared salaries for full-time employees only.
Less time is spent in reminiscing than in comparing jobs, salaries and marital status.
It's notoriously difficult to compare salaries among different jobs.
So when comparing salaries, keep in mind that a lot depends on experience, location, hours and intensity of work.
In the relational database example, you can quickly compare salaries and ages because of the arrangement of data in columns.