How to find nth highest salary in SQL

This is a very common SQL Server Interview Question. 

There are several ways of finding the nth highest salary.  



By the end of this post, we will be able to answer all the following questions as well.
1. How to find nth highest salary in SQL Server using a Sub-Query
2. How to find nth highest salary in SQL Server using a CTE
3. How to find the 2nd, 3rd or 15th highest salary

Let's use the following Employees table for this demo. 
 

Use the following script to create Employees table

Create table Employees

(

     ID int primary key identity,

     FirstName nvarchar(50),

     LastName nvarchar(50),

     Gender nvarchar(50),

     Salary int

)

GO

Insert into Employees values ('Ben', 'Hoskins', 'Male', 70000)

Insert into Employees values ('Mark', 'Hastings', 'Male', 60000)

Insert into Employees values ('Steve', 'Pound', 'Male', 45000)

Insert into Employees values ('Ben', 'Hoskins', 'Male', 70000)

Insert into Employees values ('Philip', 'Hastings', 'Male', 45000)

Insert into Employees values ('Mary', 'Lambeth', 'Female', 30000)

Insert into Employees values ('Valarie', 'Vikings', 'Female', 35000)

Insert into Employees values ('John', 'Stanmore', 'Male', 80000)

GO

To find the highest salary it is straight forward. We can simply use the Max() function as shown below.

Select Max(Salary) from Employees

To get the second highest salary use a sub query along with Max() function as shown below.

Select Max(Salary) from Employees where Salary < (Select Max(Salary) from Employees)

To find nth highest salary using Sub-Query

SELECT TOP 1 SALARY

FROM (

      SELECT DISTINCT TOP N SALARY

      FROM EMPLOYEES

      ORDER BY SALARY DESC

      ) RESULT

ORDER BY SALARY

To find nth highest salary using CTE

WITH RESULT AS

(

    SELECT SALARY,

           DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY SALARY DESC) AS DENSERANK

    FROM EMPLOYEES

)

SELECT TOP 1 SALARY

FROM RESULT

WHERE DENSERANK = N

To find 2nd highest salary we can use any of the above queries. Simple replace N with 2. 

Similarly, to find 3rd highest salary, simple replace N with 3. 

Please Note: On many of the websites, you may have seen that, the following query can be used to get the nth highest salary. The below query will only work if there are no duplicates.

WITH RESULT AS

(

    SELECT SALARY,

           ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY SALARY DESC) AS ROWNUMBER

    FROM EMPLOYEES

)

SELECT SALARY

FROM RESULT

WHERE ROWNUMBER = 3