How do mean and median behave differently when salaries contain extreme values?

The mean uses every value and can move substantially when a few salaries are very high. The median is the middle ordered value and is less sensitive to those extremes. For a highly skewed salary distribution, report the median with percentiles and sample size, and use the mean when the question conce s total payroll per employee. Neither statistic describes the whole distribution. Check units, missing values, employment categories, and whether the sample represents the population before drawing conclusions about typical pay.