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 concerns 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.