RE: Salary surveys show you're underpaid - how do you ask your boss for a pay raise?

This all sounds right on target with the norm, but a question I have is how to market rate adjustments come into play?

(Companies that openly pay their employees based on the market price.) Not that I am experienced with how this works, but it seems that those companies try to keep folks in the dark about what they are really worth by having some source of income statistics that the rest of us don't have. Obviously demographics and experience are factors. But where do these numbers really come from? How can an employee benefit from this information if we don't have it? Or, is this the way "they" want it?

Click to read the article this is in response to.