SQL query to find third highest salary in company - sql

Question

I need to write a query that will return the third highest salaried employee in the company.
I was trying to accomplish this with subqueries, but could not get the answer. My attempts are below:
select Max(salary)
from employees
where Salary not in
(select Max(salary)
from employees
where Salary not in
(select Max(salary)
from employees));
My thought was that I could use 2 subqueries to elimitate the first and second highest salaries. Then I could simply select the MAX() salary that is remaining. Is this a good option, or is there a better way to achieve this?

Answer 1

The most simple way that should work in any database is to do following:
SELECT * FROM `employee` ORDER BY `salary` DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;
Which orders employees by salary and then tells db to return a single result (1 in LIMIT) counting from third row in result set (2 in OFFSET). It may be OFFSET 3 if your DB counts result rows from 1 and not from 0.
This example should work in MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Edit:
But there's a catch if you only want the 3rd highest DISTINCT salary. Than you should add the DISTINCT keyword.
In case of salary list: 100, 90, 90, 80, 70.
In the above query it will produce the 3rd highest salary which is 90. But if you mean the 3rd distinct which is 80 than you should use
SELECT DISTINCT `salary` FROM `employee` ORDER BY `salary` DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;
But there's a catch, this will return you only 1 column which is Salary, because in order to operate the distinction operation, DISTINCT can only operate on a specific set of columns.
This means we should add another wrapping query to extract the employees(There can be multiple) that matches that result. Thus I added LIMIT 1 at the end.
SELECT *
FROM `employee`
WHERE
`Salary` = (SELECT DISTINCT `Salary`
FROM `employee`
ORDER BY `salary` DESC
LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2
)
LIMIT 1;
Examples can be found HERE

Answer 2

You can get the third highest salary by using limit , by using TOP keyword and sub-query
TOP keyword
SELECT TOP 1 salary
FROM
(SELECT TOP 3 salary
FROM Table_Name
ORDER BY salary DESC) AS Comp
ORDER BY salary ASC
limit
SELECT salary
FROM Table_Name
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 2, 1
by subquery
SELECT salary
FROM
(SELECT salary
FROM Table_Name
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 3) AS Comp
ORDER BY salary
LIMIT 1;
I think anyone of these help you.

Answer 3

You may try (if MySQL):
SELECT salary FROM employee ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 2, 1;
This query returns one row after skipping two rows.
You may also want to return distinct salary. For example, if you have 20,20,10 and 5 then 5 is the third highest salary. To do so, add DISTINCT to the above query:
SELECT DISTINCT salary FROM employee ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 2, 1;

Answer 4

SELECT Max(salary)
FROM employee
WHERE salary < (SELECT Max(salary)
FROM employee
WHERE salary NOT IN(SELECT Max(salary)
FROM employee))
hope this helped you

Answer 5

If SQL Server this could work
SELECT TOP (1) * FROM
(SELECT TOP (3) salary FROM employees ORDER BY salary DESC) T
ORDER BY salary ASC
As for your number of subqueries question goes it depends on your language. Check this for more information
Is there a nesting limit for correlated subqueries in Oracle?

Answer 6

SELECT id
FROM tablename
ORDER BY id DESC
LIMIT 2 , 1
This is only for get 3rd highest value .

Answer 7

You may use this for all employee with 3rd highest salary:
SELECT * FROM `employee` WHERE salary = (
SELECT DISTINCT(`salary`) FROM `employee` ORDER BY `salary` DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2
);

Answer 8

Some DBMS's don't allow you to run several nested queries. Here is a solution that only uses 1 nested query:
SELECT salary
FROM
(
SELECT salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY salary
LIMIT 3
) as TBL1
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 1;
It should give you the desired result. It first finds the 3 largest salaries, then selects the smallest of the three (or the third one if they are equal). Here is an SQLFiddle

Answer 9

I found a very good explanation in
http://www.programmerinterview.com/index.php/database-sql/find-nth-highest-salary-sql/
This query should give nth highest salary
SELECT *
FROM Employee Emp1
WHERE (N-1) = (
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(Emp2.Salary))
FROM Employee Emp2
WHERE Emp2.Salary > Emp1.Salary)

Answer 10

SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees GROUP BY salary ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;

Answer 11

SELECT * FROM employee ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;

Answer 12

You can use nested query to get that, like below one is explained for the third max salary. Every nested salary is giving you the highest one with the filtered where result and at the end it will return you exact 3rd highest salary irrespective of number of records for the same salary.
select * from users where salary < (select max(salary) from users where salary < (select max(salary) from users)) order by salary desc limit 1

Answer 13

Below query will give accurate answer. Follow and give me comments:
select top 1 salary from (
select DISTINCT top 3 salary from Table(table name) order by salary ) as comp
order by personid salary

Answer 14

you can get any order for salary with that:
select * from
(
select salary,row_Number() over (order by salary DESC ) RN
FROM employees
)s
where RN = 3
-- put RN equal to any number of orders.
--for your question put 3

Answer 15

You can find Nth highest salary by making use of just one single query which is very simple to understand:-
select salary from employees e1 where N-1=(select count(distinct
salary) from employees e2 where e2.salary>e1.salary);
Here Replace "N" with number(1,2,3,4,5...).This query work properly even when where salaries are duplicate. The simple idea behind this query is that the inner subquery
count how many salaries are greater then (N-1). When we get the count then the cursor will point to that row which is N and it simply returns the salary present in that row.

Answer 16

SELECT salary FROM employees e1
WHERE N-1 = (SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT salary) FROM employees e2
WHERE e2.salary > e1.salary)
Here, I have solved it with a correlated nested query. It is a generalized Query so if you want to print 4th, 5th, or any number of highest salary it will work perfectly even if there are any duplicate salaries.
So, what you have to do is simply change the N value here. So, in your case, it will be,
SELECT salary FROM employees e1
WHERE 3-1 = (SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT salary) FROM employees e2
WHERE e2.salary > e1.salary)

Answer 17

Note that the third highest salary may be the same the the first highest salary so your current approach wouldn't work.
I would do order the employees by salary and apply a LIMIT 3 at the end of the SQL query. You'll then have the top three of highest salaries and, thus, you also have the third highest salary (if there is one, a company may have two employees and then you wouldn't have a third highest salary).

Answer 18

For me this query work fine in Mysql
it will return third max salary from table
SELECT salary FROM users ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;
or
SELECT salary FROM users ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 2,1;

Answer 19

select min (salary) from Employee where Salary in (Select Top 3 Salary from Employee order by Salary desc)

Answer 20

SELECT TOP 1 BILL_AMT Bill_Amt FROM ( SELECT DISTINCT TOP 3 NH_BL_BILL.BILL_AMT FROM NH_BL_BILL ORDER BY BILL_AMT DESC) A
ORDER BY BILL_AMT ASC

Answer 21

SELECT DISTINCT MAX(salary) AS max
FROM STAFF
WHERE salary IN
(SELECT salary
FROM STAFF
WHERE salary<(SELECT MAX(salary) AS maxima
FROM STAFF
WHERE salary<
(SELECT MAX(salary) AS maxima
FROM STAFF))
GROUP BY salary);
I have tried other ways they are not right. This one works.

Answer 22

We can find the Top nth Salary with this Query.
WITH EMPCTE AS (
SELECT E.*, DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY SALARY DESC) AS DENSERANK
FROM EMPLOYEES E
)
SELECT * FROM EMPCTE WHERE DENSERANK=&NUM

Answer 23

for oracle it goes like this:
select salary from employee where rownnum<=3 order by salary desc
minus
select salary from employee where rownnum<=2 order by salary desc;

Answer 24

The SQL-Server implementation of this will be:
SELECT SALARY FROM EMPLOYEES OFFSET 2 ROWS FETCH NEXT 1 ROWS ONLY

Answer 25

This is a MYSQL query.
Explanation: The subquery returns top 3 salaries. From the returned result, we select the minimum salary, which is the 3rd highest salary.
SELECT MIN(Salary)
FROM (
SELECT Salary
FROM Employees
ORDER BY Salary DESC
LIMIT 3
) AS TopThreeSalary;

Answer 26

in Sql Query you can get nth highest salary
select * from(
select empname, sal, dense_rank()
over(order by sal desc)r from Employee)
where r=&n;
To find to the 2nd highest sal set n = 2
To find 3rd highest sal set n = 3 and so on.

Answer 27

This works fine with Oracle db.
select SAL from ( SELECT DISTINCT SAL FROM EMP ORDER BY SAL DESC FETCH FIRST 3 ROWS ONLY ) ORDER BY SAL ASC FETCH FIRST 1 ROWS ONLY

Answer 28

SELECT *
FROM maintable_B7E8K
order by Salary
desc limit 1 offset 2;

Answer 29

--Oracle SQL
with temp as (
select distinct salary from HR.EMPLOYEES
order by SALARY desc
)
select min(temp.salary) from temp
where rownum <= 3;

Answer 30

SELECT * FROM(
SELECT salary, DENSE_RANK()
OVER(ORDER BY salary DESC)r FROM Employee)
WHERE r=&n;
To find the 3rd highest salary set n = 3