Average salary

[ThomasSoerensen]

Today I leaned that the average after tax income per person in Germany is around 1550 EUR per month. Source

I find this shocking!!!!!!!

Does anybody else feel that we are a bit out of sync with the "average" person?

I know this number include all people with an income so also people on benefits and retired people.

But still 1500 EUR!!!!!!!!

That is not a lot.


According to wikipedia Income in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia the median in UK before tax is 18500 GBP per year


Am I the only one who feel disconnected from these numbers ?

[AtW]

Median is not the same as "average".

HTH

[doodab]

There is also a big difference in the cost of living between young people living at home / sharing a cheapish place with friends, middle aged folk with a young family, family house and so on, and old people with the mortgage paid off. There are people who can get by quite well on that sort of money, and people who struggle to make ends meet on three or four times as much.

In Germany there is a difference in the cost of living between west and east as well.

[ThomasSoerensen]

Median is not the same as "average".

HTH

I know, that is why I specified both. So people would not make a direct comparison.

Unfortunately I could not find either average or median incomes for both countries.

What is the average or median income in Russia?

[ThomasSoerensen]

There is also a big difference in the cost of living between young people living at home / sharing a cheapish place with friends, middle aged folk with a young family, family house and so on, and old people with the mortgage paid off. There are people who can get by quite well on that sort of money, and people who struggle to make ends meet on three or four times as much.

In Germany there is a difference in the cost of living between west and east as well.

I agree with all that.

And I guess both the average and median also "hides" that the number of people on high incomes are much much smaller than the number of people on low incomes. It does not hide it but one has to be careful when using the average or median.
But I expect the calculation of median or average only includes people with actual incomes. So not all the people of age less than 16 or so.

I guess some of my shock comes from not feeling particularly far from average/median in many senses but then seeing my income compared and realizing that I am far from that when talking about income.

And where do all these people hide? They cannot be the ones crowding the highstreet every Saturday?

[AtW]

What is the average or median income in Russia?

It's pretty high I think but it is unevenly split between the likes of Abramovich who can blow £50 mln a piece on overated footballers and those who have to gather empty bottles to supplement monthly income just to get enough food survive.

1550 euros per month is 18600 euros per year or £16032 at current exchange rates, but this is AFTER tax - so that would be around £21k before UK tax on PAYE. Given that average UK salary is apparently £25,900 (according to ONS) it may seem like UK people get paid a lot, however I am willing to bet that cost of living in the UK is much higher than in Germany, also we need to check if your German salary is calculated using only people who actually earn salary not everyone in country.

Either way both average amounts do not provide for great standard of living - certainly not in the UK.

HTH

[doodab]

And where do all these people hide? They cannot be the ones crowding the highstreet every Saturday?

I would hazard a guess they are the ones fishing bottles out of the bin for the pfand and shopping in Lidl and Aldi.

[Alf W]

Median is not the same as "average".

HTH

Median is a type of Average you muppet.

[ThomasSoerensen]

It's pretty high I think but it is unevenly split between the likes of Abramovich who can blow £50 mln a piece on overated footballers and those who have to gather empty bottles to supplement monthly income just to get enough food survive.

1550 euros per month is 18600 euros per year or £16032 at current exchange rates, but this is AFTER tax - so that would be around £21k before UK tax on PAYE. Given that average UK salary is apparently £25,900 (according to ONS) it may seem like UK people get paid a lot, however I am willing to bet that cost of living in the UK is much higher than in Germany, also we need to check if your German salary is calculated using only people who actually earn salary not everyone in country.

Either way both average amounts do not provide for great standard of living - certainly not in the UK.

HTH

Not out of personal disrespect but I think you make several mistakes.

It's pretty high I think but it is unevenly split between the likes of Abramovich

This indicates that you do not understand average and median. As Abramovich is only 1 person he counts for little in the calculation of average and for even less in the calculation of the median. The millions of people on low incomes will far outweigh his influence.

Given that average UK salary is apparently £25,900 (according to ONS) it may seem like UK people get paid a lot,

You also seem to equate salary (your ONS source) to income. You have to include people who earn no salary but still have income from other sources, benefits, pensions etc. At least that is what the numbers I have for Germany and UK include.
Can you find a number that include all incomes and people that have incomes?


Moving on from that:
I found a list of incomes corrected for Purchasing Power Parity. But these I assume are gross, before tax. So that has to be taken into account when looking at them.


Here you see UK and Germany next to each other and Russia at about half the income. This is more in line with my expectations.

But still all those amounts are quite different from what we, IT contractors, usually have. Or maybe I am even wrong about us lot too.
Still

[ThomasSoerensen]

Median is a type of Average you muppet.

Median is the half way point when you rank the observations in ascending or descending order. Mean (average) is the cumulate of the observations divided by the number of observations.

I do not see that median is a type of average.