Percentage Points Calculator

About this calculator

A percentage point and a percent change sound similar but measure very different things, and mixing them up is one of the most common errors in reading financial and political news. If an interest rate moves from 5% to 7%, that's a 2 percentage point increase (simple subtraction) but a 40% relative increase (the 2-point gap divided by the original 5%, expressed as a percentage).

This calculator takes two percentages and reports both figures side by side — the flat percentage-point gap and the relative percent change — so the difference is impossible to confuse. It's especially useful for interpreting interest rate announcements, unemployment or inflation figures, survey and polling results, or any headline that quotes a shift in percentages, where the two measures can tell very different stories about the same move.