How are salaries actually calculated?

[catontheiPad]

Am applying for jobs at the moment and trying to get my head round how salaries are actually calculated. Obviously I know benchmarking etc, but I mean the specific numbers - I just saw one where the advertised salary is £35,668.73. How would you even get a number like that?! Why wouldn't you just advertise it as £35,600 or whatever?!

I'm also thinking of organisations with spine points where you start on something like £25,367 and move up to £31,598 (or whatever). Why don't they deal in nice round numbers?! Any HR bods work in this field and know how they calculate these things?

It's always annoyed me and I can't work out why.

I guess the figure started off as round and then increased with odd percentages for inflation so no longer a round figure.

But someone has to design the salary structure initially right? So do they just start out with 25,000-35,000 and then the inflationary percentages turn it wonky?

Yes, as the pp said. You might start off with a nice round 25000 but then the agreed pay increase is 1.75% so next time you have to advertise the job at the new salary of 25437.5.
Of course they could round up to £2550 but if you've got 1000 staff at that grade that's an extra nearly 63 grand you're paying out, plus you know you'll have to change it all to another odd number next year anyway!

Here in the US salary tends to be dictated by how in demand your skill set is at the time of application, and how much relevant experience you have. At least in the private sector.