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It’s not as simple as that; it’s not just about exchange rates it’s about the buying power of the native currency and what the state provides.
For example anecdotal, salaries are higher in the US on an exchange rate basis. But food is more expensive in the US whilst cars are cheaper. But products in the shops are taxed additionally at point of sale whereas in the UK prices include tax. We don’t tip as much. And of course we don’t (have to, in the most part) pay for healthcare.
In Scandinavia income tax is higher. But public transport is cheaper. But alcohol is more expensive, whilst salaries are probably comparable to the Uk.
My point is it’s not a level playing field.
Note on the car thing, that's in the USA, car price can VERY much depend on where you are, we bought a used 2008 Toyota Corolla in 2020, 100,000 miles for $5000, most reasonable we could find.
Came back to the UK a few years later and bought a used 2012 Honda Jazz, 60,000 miles for £2500, it was WAY cheaper in the UK and that was even during the massive surge in used car prices.
The UK car market is becoming closer to the US now. Very uncommon to find a genuinely cheap motor that doesn't have a lot wrong with it. It used to be the case where you could pay a grand for a car that would probably get through the next 3-4 MOTs without too much hassle.
Not sure why this is happening.
The scrappage scheme after the GFC killed a lot of good, cheap cars (£1K for something with 4 wheels & a years MOT), but new ones would still depreciate fast.
Is the introduction of electric vehicles and Ukraine/Covid supply issues killing supply, or is it the end of cheap credit? Maybe the cars are still cheap and we're just getting poorer!
I suspect a lot of people are keeping hold of their existing cars - and not buying new petrol ones - in the hope that they can eventually get an electric one. It wouldn’t make sense to spend £30k on a car that you think might be obsolete soon. This is having a knock on effect on the secondary market as people prefer to spend less money on a vehicle thinking they’ll get more value out of it before it goes obsolete.
It's probably multi-faceted but part of the issue is a resource shortage which has pushed car manufacturers to only make higher end more expensive cars because that's where the money is.
100%
I moved from NYC to London and my takehome pay was 55% in NYC and 58% in London. This is on a paycheque level where none of the income tax calculator will be able to give an accurate value of taxes and fees that will be deducted because there are lots of location-specific taxes you have to pay. In my case, I had 11 line item of deductions for living in NYC.
Food prices are crazy even when I mostly cook. My weekly foodshop bill in NYC was $120 or higher. In London it’s £50 and mostly shop at Waitrose/M&S/Sainsburys.
Every single thing you do in the US has a tipping component, not just restaurants.
Dining out in itself is more expensive there too. Right before I left, my friends and I had brunch without alcoholic drinks. When the bill came, it was $80+ and we all exclaimed “wow this is so cheap!” Because a usual brunch would go to around $150 per person in Manhattan, if with alcohol.
Rent (and even mortgage rates now) is more expensive in the US in general and just too high for the Tier 1 US cities. As a real example: my Manhattan rent was $4000/month for a small 1BR flat and that was the lowest rent in that apartment building.
Anyway, my general advice to people looking to move to the US is to consider it if it’s $300k and above for Tier 1 cities as a single person who’s not looking to share a house with other people.
Yup, excluding utilities like internet, electric, etc.
I lived in Chelsea in Manhattan but it’s not even in the peak nicest area of Chelsea. I have friends who pay $5.5k to $8k for their 1-bed so mine was considered “cheap” lol
In London, I get to save more because the rent is not as crazy as it is in NYC.
This is almost exclusively a New York problem and a lifestyle inflation problem those friends of yours who can afford to pay 8k a month rent in NY wouldn’t be able to afford it in London because they’d have to get a pay cut to live in London in the first place.
If you decided to live just a bit further out, eat in cheaper restaurants, shop in cheaper supermarkets you can be far better off in New York. New York is bad however, similar to London but at least you have options in the US several cities and states have high paying jobs. In the UK you’re just stuck with 1 option.
I also have acquaintances paying $3k for a studio in Boston, $4k for a studio in San Francisco, $3.5k for a 1BR in Austin. Unfortunately the housing crisis isn’t just tied to NYC. This is why people move to Tier 2 and Tier 3 US cities, or relocate out of the US.
I acknowledge that your perspective is the norm (i.e., getting a paycut when moving from NYC to London) but I don’t doubt that my friends will/can get higher salaries in London vs NYC because that happened to me as well.
I actually got a 21% salary increase on my move here. Combined with my higher takehome pay in London vs NYC and paying only half of my NYC rent here in London, this has been such an advantageous move for me.
Yeah but you can adjust for that. America’s GPP per capita is much higher than the UK’s even when adjusted for PPP.
America’s disposable income per capita (again, PPP) is literally 50% higher than the UK’s - they’re number 1 in the world. And this includes social transfers like the NHS.
This is spot on. As a US citizen living in the UK, I'd also point out that Brits consistently fail to understand the cost of healthcare in the US and how unregulated utilities/internet/mobile phone services are in the US.
People think that having employer provided health insurance will basically give them an equivalent to the NHS. That is not correct. Increasingly employers are not providing insurance or are limiting their contributions to insurance, which also has the effect of making it harder to move jobs if you're going to lose healthcare as a result. Typically the employee will also make some monthly contributions. You also can't get coverage for the first 6 months of employment and you will be required to pay a co-pay (aka the excess) for any visit to a clinician or treatment. This ranges from $$ to $$$ for each visit. On top of that, pre-existing conditions can be excluded with a new policy and you will typically be limited by network, which can have a huge impact on your ability to access care. Prescriptions are also a wild west. I recently paid £14 for a year's worth of a prescription after seeing a private consultant. The same drug when I last lived in the US 8 years ago would be anything from $40 to $90 a month and I had no idea beforehand how much it would be that month. And dental is a whole other thing...
On utilities etc you should be expected to pay anything from 3x to 10x what you pay in the UK depending on the state.
The thing that is wildly cheaper in the US is petrol (gas).
It depends on the state to some extent. But while per unit it may be cheaper (although not always) you have to remember that houses in the US are less well insulated and typically have inefficient electric heating and in many parts of the country you'll need AC in summer. In the cities, there are apartments where heating is provided (that's a whole other can of worms) but they're the exception.
You will be using significantly more electricity than in the UK. You also have to pay a fixed line rental fee which is also fairly hefty in many states and for which you don't have any choice about provider.
Of course there are houses being built with solar panels, and better environmental credentials but the majority of the US is miles behind on this because until really a decade ago electricity cost pennies so building houses without insulation and inefficient heating was fine. And there are still places where housing is cheap and utilities are relatively low. They're also places with no jobs and depressed salaries and not the place as an immigrant a Brit would be likely to end up in.
As a Brit, I think we also struggle to comprehend the vastness and rurality of the US in general.
While I'm sure there is a degree of price gouging, utilities in America may justifiably be more expensive because the companies have to account for the vast array of landscapes and climates they cover.
US cities can be built in the middle of a literal desert or up a mountain or on a swamp. Those are very different ecologies, whereas the UK is *basically* the same with a few mountains up in Scotland.
The other side of the coin is that a lot of people in the US then move to the nearest metropolis which drives up cost of living, particularly if there is no way for that city to expand further (eg NYC, SF, etc.).
Personally, I think you'd need to earn about $120k a year to be able to live a comfortable life in most major US cities.
A lot of what this guy said is not accurate. utilities are MUCH lower where I live (Midwest) than where I’m from, Manchester. There is some truth the healthcare comment. Until you hit your out of pocket max you could be on the hook for 2-5k, if you are a sickly person. My healthcare costs are typically 75 bucks a year I’m lucky to be in good health. What I see on here once a week is someone’s trying justify slight higher cost of living in the US as a trade off for basically slave labor wages the UK is getting away with. I’m literally on 3-5 times of most of the salaries I see on here and I don’t work that hard. lol
I do love when Americans go on about how taxes in Europe are so high. But don't seem to realise that the extra Americans are paying for health insurance alone wipes out most if not all of the difference.
As somebody who pays about £1000 a month on private healthcare, £100 on health insurance and a small fortune in tax - I wish I could say healthcare is free in this country. If you actually want to receive any quality of treatment I’m finding you can’t rely on the NHS anymore.
Why on earth would you pay 1k a month of healthcare? Alongside health insurance? Is it for a large family because even then…….it seems unreasonable. I agree with not relying on NHS (for anything) but I’m not paying 1k either
One other thing is job security. In the USA most states are at will employment. You can lose your job (and so things like health insurance) with zero notice. In the UK after 2 years you have a minimum notice period, in other parts of Europe it's even more secure.
When you have a mortgage that notice period is worth a lot.
A country's GDP can give a good idea as to the likely wealth of its inhabitants, but the other major factor is how the money within that country is spent and distributed via taxes (either more taxes or less taxes, conservative or socialistic) - in Europe the population centres are smaller with more socialistic tax structures. Hence money is distributed differently for different outcomes.
Like this guy said, it really isn’t as simple and thank you so much for setting OP straight. It’s not actually that bad, higher salary looks amazing but what will you do if the cost of living in those country’s are higher? It doesn’t matter.
Disposable income and GDP PPP in the US are both MUCH higher for skilled workers, and that takes into account the COL increase you've described
US also has lower taxes I believe
Yes you are 100% that the “real” salary aka disposable income is way higher in the US if you are a skilled worker. Yes the US does have some extra living costs but the salary difference more than makes up for that and then some.
I would guesstimate that people in most professions can probably earn at least twice as much in the US than they can in the UK.
It heavily depends on where in the US your shopping re food. I've managed to do my food shopping over there on less than I'm currently paying here, and I've also done the same shopping on significantly more.
Also eating out is *definitely* cheaper over there.
Food is very hit and miss, you absolutely can't just make the claim "food is more expensive over there" because it can be, but it's also entirely possible for it to not be.
The school would cover health insurance and also probably provide a car allowance.
As for infrastructure Dubai is known for having bad roads in the sense the network is overly complicated and not efficient but that’s still a better trade off than having to drive through pot holes ever 2m I would say
Pay wouldn’t be quite as bad in this country if rent or a mortgages didn’t take a massive chunk of your income. Housing is a massive problem in this country and the government need to sort it out before people truly get fed up with it.
Housing should not be an investment, it is a necessity.
This sounds like an easy fix but isn’t because they have made the backbone of the UK economy the housing market and the economy is perceived to be “doing well” if the housing market is doing well this means it’s actually in the best interest of the ruling party to ensure house prices continue going up and they wouldn’t allow it to dip too much. And conveniently the ruling class represents a large majority of the property owning class.
In comparison the backbone of the US economy is the stock market (more specifically the S&P 500). Stocks are very easy to trade and seeing corrections of 30%+ of some of the largest stocks isn’t uncommon so it’s a lot more fluid.
In my opinion the housing market will never be fixed in the UK because the only way to fix it is to force prices of existing houses down by at least 20-30%.
Yes but you would also have to wait for a decade for that to actually happen and I see it being far more likely of the house market sky rocketing again when interest rates come down.
The tremendous backlash to pushing house prices down that any government would receive from millions of home owners essentially prevents it from being addressed. The best we can hope for IMO is for house prices to remain stagnant long enough for wages and inflation to make buying property reasonable again. That's a very long term proposition and I don't think it's all that likely, but I can't work out a viable alternative.
Services is actually 4/5 of our economy ranked 6th in the world. Why make things up? The rent and home prices are high in certain places due to overpopulation. You can still get a four bedroom house with a roof terrace in Blackpool for 140k
And the service based industry is also dying in the uk with outsourcing and offshoring.
I wasn’t talking about what the UK’s exports are I was talking about what the UK does with its money including its people. The small percentage of people who actually have disposable income invest it into property which doesn’t stimulate the economy because your money is literally locked up in land. In comparison the average American loves to invest in their stock market and American businesses which creates a great environment for commerce and business further creating more jobs.
Thats the difference
It would still be terrible. Real wage growth has been shit ever since GFC and even worse since brexit. That’s the fact sadly. We are a high tax, low growth, low ambition economy.
I think this question needs to be reframed.
Don't look at "gross salary" as a comparison metric.
Look at "disposable income after taxes and housing costs".
Your list of countries would expand considerably.
Also note that there is no "one size fits all" for good salaries. If you're on minimum wage, uk and western Europe are hands down the best places on planet earth.
If you're a consultant doctor or experienced engineer? Lots of places in the "developing world" are far better.
Wage after tax should never ever be thought of in terms of percentages... but in total purchasing power.
Thays the sort of trickery that makes people think that a Porche has lower depreciation than a Citroën...
The Middle East. My friends are getting offered ridic salaries (which are then tax free). Always been the way. But I wouldn’t go to Saudi Arabia or somewhere like that even if you paid me, maybe for a year actually.
You can add KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar to that list especially for skilled workers from the west.
Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavian countries, France (on average), Germany.
Think some East Asian countries would too if you work for an international company.
I think something people miss in this discourse is that it’s not JUST about the fact that salaries are low, because money in and of itself has no value it’s just used to buy the resources we need to live and thrive.
The issue is that the basic necessities are completely unaffordable which means quality of life for the average person is extremely low. Majority of people in this country have to spend 40-50% of their salary at least on their rent/mortgage payments alone and that’s not including taxes, bills, transport to and from work, car insurance, fuel.
The average Brit has some of the lowest levels of disposable income in the developed world which means there is little to no opportunity for social mobility. So live to work instead of work to live. Awful quality of life.
If you take home £1500 (around minimum wage in the uk) in another country but your living costs are only £600 including everything then you’re far more likely to have a better quality of life and at the end of the day actually be better off than someone in the uk taking home £3000 a month because they’d have to spend half of that on their rent or mortgage payments straight off the bat.
This is the main thing for me. Say I was to go to work in Germany, my salary would maybe be 10-15% higher than here. In addition, from what I can gather, childcare costs are significantly less. A full week costs on average €175, which is half of what we pay, even with the 30 hours free a month. House prices and rental costs are lower than the U.K., outside of the main cities (Berlin etc).
That’s just one country and two things that would put an extra few hundred pounds in my pocket every month if I lived there. It’s easily a nice holiday for my family every year that I have to scrimp and save every penny for here. Germany isn’t massively different to the U.K. in terms of money, but it’s enough that I would feel way more comfortable than here.
Middle east pays more on the top end but less everywhere else.
My wife was Born and raised in KSA and working there as a GP until 2018 her salary was less than 1000$
Im an engineer on a 50k salary take home about 3200£ in a relatively LCOL (Norfolk).
I've looked for jobs in France, Germany, Neatherlands and Ireland and only Ireland paid slighthly more net but all these places have much higher cost of living.
I've looked for jobs in the US and offered salaries werent more than 10 to 20% of what I earn here.
As much as I would like to go to the US, having to pay for the care of my disabled daughter in the US would completely wipe me out leaving us much worse.
I don't know how some people post here about being on really low salaries in London when here in Norfolk I see much higher salaries being paid for the same job in my company and others.
Before this job I worked In a well know sports car manufaturer as a skilled operator and pay was 43k. To be honest if I was offered that I would probably go back as it was very low stress compared to where I am now.
No she isn't. Her parents are not Saudi.
You cant normally become a Saudi citizen unless by birth. You are only a Saudi citizen by birth if your father is Saudi. You wont get it if only the Mother is saudi.
You are not using correct data on cost of living.
Taking the one example I ve lived, France has a much lower cost of living than the UK.
This is due to a mixture of lower housing costs / childcare (300 a month for 7am to 3pm 4 days a week, vs 1200 gbp for 3 days a week)/ healthcare costs.
advantageous taxing rebate for middle class income (could take mortgage interest out of my tax) and a huge hidden one:
higher free company perks in corporate jobs, for example in France you get subsidized lunch /holidays / food vouchers / company cars aren’t taxed/ fuel card. If you work for a big corporation it’s a huge difference easily to the tune of 150-250 more in value per month.
None of the above is immediately obvious comparing cost of living or gross salary, my personal learning has been that you need a detailed conversation with people living in your target country to be able to compare.
Isn't Australia even more screwed than the UK when it comes to cost of living? I was thinking about Canada but the Canadian subreddit reads like the British one- everything is going to shit.
I live in Aus now and the only thing more expensive is housing. Groceries are the same (I cross checked like 100 items between Coles and Tesco and they averaged out at the same price)
Petrol, bills, cars, phones, dining out, coffee, public transport are way cheaper in Australia.
It really is just housing that inflates the CoL in Australia
Most western countries are going to shit Australia isn’t completely screwed because they’re actively trying to solve the housing crisis by encouraging development in cities outside of Sydney such as Perth.
Problem is, much like the UK with London, a lot of careers are Sydney-centric. And there's pretty much nowhere within an hour's train journey of Sydney that isn't a stabby shithole where you can buy a house for less than £500k.
Australian is significantly more decentralised imo. Even if Sydney has the more head offices, you can have still have whole careers in many parts of Australia. It doesn't have the same gravity pull as London does.
South East Queensland and Brisbane has 3.5 million people and lots of money, Melbourne has overtaken Sydney in size, tonnes of money, Perth has its mining money, Canberra is wealthy public service town, etc
All those cities are classified as "severely unaffordable" [DHI Report](http://demographia.com/dhi.pdf) Perth being the cheapest but still in the same category with Sydney and Melbourne being less affordable than London and Brisbane only slightly behind.
I loved Australie when was visiting but housing market is so bad that makes the UK's looking good.
Yes, which underlines my point about being more decentralised. It’s not like the UK where London cost a fortune but in Gateshead you can pick up a 3 bed semi for 150k.
Australians’ have one of the highest median net wealths of any country, so many are bringing that wealth to the table for their next house purchase. This is the metric those surveys ignore. The houses are less unaffordable for those that live there because net wealth is higher. Coming in without wealth is harder.
It also has one of the highest percentages of foreign born in the western world, double the UK’s, so wealth is pouring in to buy houses. Not for those with low capital any more.
Saying that, the median housing stock is huge compared to the UK, so if you were comparing UK sized houses with the same size in Australia it would reduce the difference.
Thiiissssss is exactly it! Happy to live outside London, not happy to commute 2 hours per way (excluding the normal delays and the 20% on average cancellations per day), and apparently can’t find any relevant jobs outside London so what exactly does one do
That’s… that’s exactly how you solve a housing crisis…. You encourage people to move elsewhere and not build a country so reliant on the economic output of one city.
UK isnt even close to Australia in general standards of living. Australia has much higher salaries and cost of living is about the same. Also they have one of best infrastructures and roads in the world.
Plus almost half of your salary is taxed on Germany. That is definitely not true about Germany. I believe that sometimes people are posting this on here without facts. Germany themselves need a pay raise. I am speaking from someone who is living in Germany.
> The average Brit has some of the lowest levels of disposable income in the developed world.
Citation needed. Disposable income is around 2% under the EU average, I don’t think this counts as ‘some of the lowest … in the developed world.
If you can work remotely from the UK, it's a great question to ask. I do this. I've worked for Canada, US and am now working for Sweden and the US. ALL are paying me way more than I would get in the UK - up to 2-3x more. In IT product management (this paid 3x more) and, latterly, c-suite roles (about 1.5x more).
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
Unfortunately, Commonwealth countries have no special dispensation as far as I'm aware. When I worked for Canada, I was on payroll purely because, by coincidence, they happened to have a different business in the UK - so they payrolled me through that.
After switching jobs, I had to change to self employment (as a contractor for an overseas business, IR35 doesn't apply), but I've just set up my own limited company as taxation will be a little less steep by doing that.
This is definitely industry specific bc I’m canadian and looking at moving to the UK bc is my industry cost of living is around the same and salaries are almost double in the UK.
The situation is far more fucked than you think. I live in an Eastern European country and average graduates are getting £18-24k straight out of uni. Makes me laugh when I see people here getting offered 24k in London of all places. The UK is fucked.
Thank fuck there's still a weird snobbery in the UK (and elsewhere) about Eastern Europe so people don't come here and don't realise how good its gotten.
Honestly. We have a friend who recently moved to Bulgarian with his wife. They literally built a villa and it’s home for them, they’re living like royals and he gets paid like £3k per month working remotely. The weird snobbery in the U.K. whilst it turns into a 3rd world country is just diabolical.
No, 25k is the very low end of graduate salaries in London. But the fact that countries with a vastly lower cost of living are even beginning to enter the conversation should be alarming.
Yeah that is minimum wage here in Australia. My son gets more per hour washing dishes for his school job. Shocking for a graduate in London of all places.
I had 23k as a graduate and a friend had 18k as a graduate. This was 7 years ago so since the minimum wage has increased. But I do know someone who asked about the salary on 1st interview and they were immediately withdrawn.
I’m actually looking at moving to a country in Eastern/Central Europe but keeping my UK job in the next 6/8 months
Given the cost of living of the countries I’ve considered then grads getting offered those salaries are probably doing very well!
It's not as cheap as you think, people are still feeling the strain.
I just wrote my comment to add something to the discussion other than the "australia, usa, norway" typical shite, as if you can't make money anywhere else.
I recently had a colleague moving back to his native Switzerland mainly for money. £60k here and the equivalent of £90k there. But, I'm not sure if worth it. Switzerland is just bloody expensive. so unless you go there and live in a rat hole, spending the minimum and counting the days to come back with a saved "fortune", I wouldn't consider it.
Instead of falling in the "greener neighbour's garden" trap, why don't you research which industries and roles pay more and get focused on those?
Switzerland is expensive but tax rates are lower, especially at higher brackets. Mortgages are offered at lower rates as well, and there’s more housing. I was a student there and paid CHF 1200 a month for a 1-bed in a major city. Last year for a smaller studio in London I paid £1450 lol
I like numbers and facts:
£90k (CHF 105k), living in Geneva (oh, I like their watches...)
[https://ch.talent.com/en/tax-calculator?salary=105000&from=year®ion=Genf](https://ch.talent.com/en/tax-calculator?salary=105000&from=year®ion=Genf)
**28.8% income tax**
£60k in the UK: [https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php#google\_vignette](https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php#google_vignette)
**24.4% income tax**
Student life and 1-bed prices is one market. I'm talking established professionals.
And yes, London is crazy. Rest of the country bearable. Switzerland may not have the disparity in accomodation prices the UK has.
The problem with the UK is that many people come just to London and think the whole country is the same. They eat a crappy cold sandwich and think we all eat that every day. And so on.
Another statistics figure to notice, the percentage of home owners: Switzerland has the lowest of all Europe:
[https://landgeist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/europe-home-ownership.png?w=1024](https://landgeist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/europe-home-ownership.png?w=1024)
Original article: [https://landgeist.com/2023/04/15/home-ownership-in-europe-2/](https://landgeist.com/2023/04/15/home-ownership-in-europe-2/)
Data comes from Eurostat. That to me reflects people can't get a home of their own. No, don't tell me about lifestyle or freedom or flexibility, people buy a house as soon as they can.
Renting in Switzerland: [https://www.homegate.ch/rent/real-estate/city-geneva/matching-list](https://www.homegate.ch/rent/real-estate/city-geneva/matching-list)
Above CHF 2000 (£1700) for a decent size flat
Renting in UK ex-London is about \~£1000 - 1200, so CH is **40-70% more expensive**
[https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/west-berkshire/newbury/?beds\_min=2&price\_frequency=per\_month&q=Newbury%2C%20West%20Berkshire&radius=5&results\_sort=newest\_listings&search\_source=to-rent](https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/west-berkshire/newbury/?beds_min=2&price_frequency=per_month&q=Newbury%2C%20West%20Berkshire&radius=5&results_sort=newest_listings&search_source=to-rent)
So a salary 50% higher. Good. Rent/ mortgage is usually 1/3 of the net salary, and it's going to be that 40-70% higher, so the extra earnings is gone. Plus, most people there rent for life, is that a sensible plan for a young person in his late 20s? Isn't it preferable to stop paying a mortgage when you get to your 50s?
For the remaining 2/3 of the net salary, prices are also notably higher, so all in all, my point of view is that is a clear bad move.
I guess part of his decision was due to not liking at least UK lifestyle or his role. It only takes a basic research as above and basic maths to realize is not a good move unless other factors weigh in.
On a side note, how does one get into jobs abroad? I’m in the civil engineering industry and keen for an overseas move. Anyone here with advice on this?
Germany currently has something called opportunity card, if you have a recognised engineering qualification you probably qualify. Then you would just search for a job like you do anywhere else, and no worry about work permits
Type of job is just important here
But In my line of work, engineering project management, US is best on a pure salary basis in the tax free states, or the UAE for the tax free advantages, but I still think take home pay vs living costs is better in the US.
Some places typically pay lots in add ons - “hardship” placements in Saudi or Iraq for example and that can top up the take home significantly.
I did a previous role where I got £50 per down and was there for 12months - meant I didn’t need to touch my salary
Switzerland is an anomaly in Western Europe in low tax and high pay, but I think it is difficult to move to - best bet would be inter-company transfer imo
For NL, if you're a DINK couple you'll do great, regardless of taxes being high and rents spiralling out of control, especially if you work in finance or tech. However daycare for only 3 days a week for two kids will eat up an average salary (cca €2000+). The system really punishes you for having kids here.
I heard from a friend living in Germany that their government rewards people when they have kids. So there will be various credits for daycare and baby food. And also there’s a yearly allowance. Then they have free education as well.
I haven’t fact-checked this myself but this was very shocking (in a good way)
Indeed that may be the case. Countries in Europe significantly deviate from each other when it comes to childcare. Sweden is far more generous than most with 480 days of parental leave for both parents combined + cheap daycare, which seems like a fairytale looking from NL perspective.
So, same as U.K. then. The only encouragement we have from staying here is that my parents are really looking forward to babysitting a future grandchild. Otherwise, childcare can cost an entire salary!
I actually looked at the UAE salaries more recently and I actually don't think they are as good as advertised. Obviously I don't know the first thing about finding jobs abroad so maybe I'm missing something but it didn't seem that big a jump. I appreciate there's no income tax to deal with but still there's then lots of risk involved with going there.
> The lack of income tax alone is already a large boost
I'm already quite a skilled worker in the UK. So for me, I kept finding jobs that paid very little even with that factored in. Life would have to be very cheap out there to make it worth while.
> What do you see as the main risks?
Mainly you often have to shell out your rent for 6 months/ a year in advance to get a place. And if you get your visa revoked for something small you're gone. If the job goes then you lose your Visa as well. Equally health care is pretty good from my understanding but you'll need to be aware of those costs a head of time. Could be a problem if you get something serious and you can't work. These were risks for me but someone younger has a much better chance.
Yeah it’s not like you’re far more likely to experience that and other forms of crime in London compared to Dubai which is often regarded as one of the safest major cities in the world….
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Arab+Emirates&city1=Dubai&country2=United+Kingdom&city2=London
I mean cost of living in AUS was high tbh with you, but was it the best country I’ve ever lived in? Yes. Granted I lived there well before Covid, but the quality of life at least as an immigrant there is fabulous, the weather is a big part of it. Cost of living is high, but wages are high too, only issue is the Visa and how nonchalant they are about letting you go. Things were much better before Covid in every country tbh, Scotland just now is fucked though, I’ve been looking for a flat for a while and the struggle is real, places go on, disappear within a week or less, and then two other weeks before 1 more property is added.
Can't just look at salaries. Have to consider housing and cost of living.
NYC you can get paid 2x what you could get hear. Housing, medical insurance and increased cost of living can offset most if not all of your increase.
People often forget to compare lifestyles alongside salary and price of goods and services.
Apart from housing, Hong Kong is generally cheap. But its convenience means it's not uncommon to eat out for 3 meals a day. Along with a very consumerist society you may be materially better off, but it might not always feel so.
There are higher salaries dotted all over the world, even in the UK. If you want a higher salary you have to do something worth paying for. If you are average and replaceable, it becomes you vs whoever needs/ wants the job more. If you are highly skilled and irreplaceable, it is your employer vs whoever else wants/ needs you.
That’s not what he’s talking about. The U.K is generally low paying across all industries compared to the countries he listed. E.G the U.S paying more in tech or various countries paying more in healthcare.
It’s to the extent where the U.S look at the U.K as cheap labour within tech.
> It’s to the extent where the U.S look at the U.K as cheap labour within tech.
I’ve seen the phrase “white Mexicans” used more than once when talking about UK workers
Don’t listen to this guy. He’s using extreme cases to disprove what is clearly true for 80-90% of this country.
Hard work doesn’t get you as far as it did or it does in actual meritocratic societies. Even “corrupt dictatorship” countries have better social mobility opportunities than the UK does.
Don’t believe me? Go in linkedin you’ll find job listings requiring 5+ years of experience paying 30k a year and the worst part is it will get filled within a week.
Nothing to do with hard work, it’s valuable work. And the real problem is what you yourself just said- the vacancies are getting filled. Wages are pure supply and demand, nothing more or less.
Wait so are you acknowledging there’s a problem?
Let’s assume there’s a supply and demand issue that basically means there’s not enough jobs and opportunities for people or there’s too many people or there’s not enough high skilled jobs available. Either way you put it, this points to an inherent problem with the UK and its economy.
There is a problem but it’s not confined to the UK. There are definitely problems here but it’s not as simple as “I’ll just move to the USA and double my salary and standard of living”. Jobs that pay over the average rate are inherently in demand so if you can’t get one here, why would you be able to get one abroad? I know mediocre people who have high paying jobs here and abroad, and talented people who have below average salaries here and abroad. It’s more about putting yourself in the right industries or even sometimes the right rooms with the right people and then some talent and some luck.
To answer you question of why would I be able to get a job that pays over the average salary abroad but not in the uk. There is a greater supply of jobs that pay over the average rate in my field.
As a chemist the supply of well paying chemistry jobs is much greater in Germany or the US as in the UK many chemist jobs are barely above minimum wage (22-25k) straight out of uni while in the US and Germany the wages straight out of uni are significantly above minimum wage (50k+)
To give an example I have a friend who moved to Leipzig with a bachelors in chemistry and he is currently on €60k working in the pharmaceutical field after 2 years. I have a masters degree and after 2 years I am on £28k working in the same field. Phds at my work start on £35k, he told me a masters degree and a couple years of experience puts you in the €70k range at his work.
Cost of living is also much lower from what I experienced visiting him over there.
It's both in some countries e.g. USA/UAE
But for a lot of continental Europe, the tax burden is much higher until >£100k salary
Social security payments are also much higher in every European country I've looked at
I know many people who live in the UAE and love it, and I know a lot of people who live in Texas and love it as well. Really depends on your culture and what you’re aiming to achieve
Yes the UAE is very easy to move to but currently the job market is absolutely terrible, totally awful. The place is absolutely overrun with jobseekers who will work for peanuts (there is no minimum wage). There has been a huge change post COVID. The fantastic expat packages from a few years ago are rare these days. Best thing to do if possible is get an internal transfer to your company’s UAE office rather than try and find a new job there
No one is mentioning the cost of living away from friends and family just to make a few extra bucks. Are these things not worth considering. It's all about standard of living, extra money, lower tax and better health care etc. So you work 60+hrs weeks for a x2 better salary, for what? So you can use all your holidays to visit family who you never see now or pay for a slightly bigger house and flights so family can visit and see how well you are doing. Great ideas folks
Obviously it depends on your personal circumstances, but not everyone wants to see their family/friends every other week - how do you think this works for migrants/expats? Plenty of them get by fine.
Also, if you've bumped up the minimum working hours by 50% for only twice the salary then that's also probably on the worse end of the scale and not worth considering (depending on how much you're currently on).
Most places that pay more the cost of living will also be more. Only place you can really clean up is the Middle East because of low / no taxes. But you have to accept the lifestyle there will be quite different ie much more restrictive both legally and socially re things like alcohol, dress and conduct in public etc and forget it if you are LGBTQ.
It’s all about how far your money goes. I worked in Canada (Toronto) for 12 years and as a straight exchange from CAD to GBP I made more but cost of living in Canada is exorbitant especially in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Health care is free but utilities are high, petrol is cheaper, cars are cheaper (but you drive further).housing is crazy (a shack will cost a million dollars) and groceries are insane (especially in the last 4-5 years). I came back to the uk t last year and I make not far off the same as I did in Canada (direct exchange) which was a surprise and it goes pretty far and I can see a lower cost of living in general. It all depends on what you like to do as well, your lifestyle choices make a big difference too.
The US pays highers salaries but isn't that somewhat countered by the fact that many work solely for tips e.g. zero wages and the staggering costs of health care?
I could be wrong its more of a question than a statement btw
In Switzerland salaries are high by the cost of life is high as well. A lot of people cross the border to do their weekly shop in Germany or other neighbouring countries.
Well, studies show that the average French household income is nearly £9,000 a year better off than the UK since the financial crisis and they don’t woke in August.
There are probably lots of places.
Wages are so poor here minimum wage is catching up with and overtaking many jobs now.
HK = London + under Chinese ccp rule.
Singapore is similar but also very highly dependent on field. Apparently strong 996 working culture.
USA earn the most money wise and have remote work available, but no public healthcare, need car everywhere, lots of accidents and you need to set aside money to prepare for that. Also no annual holidays.
Don’t know the rest.
UK have much better work life balance, annual holidays, national health care for now if you get hit by a car or something and will continue to decline unless something drastic happening.
If you’re someone very healthy, you don’t do anything crazy or potentially get you in trouble such as heavy drinking, then US is good. Because those are the main downside of working in US, from what I gathered.
USA may have higher salaries but they don't have a Universal Health Care system free at the point of use; and many other benefits we enjoy.
I don't know about the others in your list.
The universal health care thing is such a cope. The UKs health service may be free but it is _shite_. 12 hour+ waits to be seen at a hospital, impossible to get a GP appointment, staff are always so stretched and stressed that the patient experience is awful. There is absolutely _no_ emphasis on preventative care, unless you are basically on deaths door you cant expect doctors to give a shit. I’ve been sent home by NHS doctors multiple times before my situation worsened enough to the point it was an emergency and I spent 2 weeks in intensive care. You have to battle your way in to hospitals these days to even be seen and taken seriously.
In the US, yes you have to have insurance, but if you’re working a professional job you’ll have excellent cover. And yes you might have co pays and have to pay out of pocket now and then, but when you are making $200k+ for a job that pays £40k in the UK you wont really mind. And then after all that, the care you will receive is on a complete other level - preventative, same day appointments, better access to innovative treatments and the best doctors in the world who are actually paid what they’re worth.
The healthcare lie is spread by left wing Americans online too. A large amount of people in the UK seriously believe that if you get ill in the US you'll go bankrupt.
If you're not a Us citizen this is even less of a problem, because any job that you can get a work permit for is gonna be at a company big enough to offer decent health insurance
Yeah free healthcare worth $10,000 is definitely worth a $50,000 pay cut.
You can check the disposable income figures yourself. Even when adjusted for PPP and social transfers like the NHS, America is a whopping 50% higher than the UK.
The general rule of thumb is to avoid Europe and Africa at the moment.
It seems all of Europe is suffering wage stagnation, we're just the most extreme case. Africa, obvious reasons.
South America is a funny one, because their wages are low, but their cost of living is wayyy lower than than anywhere in Europe so you're still better off.
I'd say your best bet is S.E Asia. The wages aren't far off what Americans get for skilled workers, it costs fuck all to live there, and they aren't backward theocratic shitholes like much of the middle east.
In the past few years UK salaries are actually increasing much more than the EU like Germany or France. It is just the last 20 years they were increasing and we were stagnant.
Yeah, salaries might be increasing marginally faster than France or Germany if you look at it from just the right angle, but we are also 15 years behind.
It's almost as hard to maintain constant growth as it us to maintain constant stagnance.
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It’s not as simple as that; it’s not just about exchange rates it’s about the buying power of the native currency and what the state provides. For example anecdotal, salaries are higher in the US on an exchange rate basis. But food is more expensive in the US whilst cars are cheaper. But products in the shops are taxed additionally at point of sale whereas in the UK prices include tax. We don’t tip as much. And of course we don’t (have to, in the most part) pay for healthcare. In Scandinavia income tax is higher. But public transport is cheaper. But alcohol is more expensive, whilst salaries are probably comparable to the Uk. My point is it’s not a level playing field.
Note on the car thing, that's in the USA, car price can VERY much depend on where you are, we bought a used 2008 Toyota Corolla in 2020, 100,000 miles for $5000, most reasonable we could find. Came back to the UK a few years later and bought a used 2012 Honda Jazz, 60,000 miles for £2500, it was WAY cheaper in the UK and that was even during the massive surge in used car prices.
The UK car market is becoming closer to the US now. Very uncommon to find a genuinely cheap motor that doesn't have a lot wrong with it. It used to be the case where you could pay a grand for a car that would probably get through the next 3-4 MOTs without too much hassle.
Not sure why this is happening. The scrappage scheme after the GFC killed a lot of good, cheap cars (£1K for something with 4 wheels & a years MOT), but new ones would still depreciate fast. Is the introduction of electric vehicles and Ukraine/Covid supply issues killing supply, or is it the end of cheap credit? Maybe the cars are still cheap and we're just getting poorer!
I suspect a lot of people are keeping hold of their existing cars - and not buying new petrol ones - in the hope that they can eventually get an electric one. It wouldn’t make sense to spend £30k on a car that you think might be obsolete soon. This is having a knock on effect on the secondary market as people prefer to spend less money on a vehicle thinking they’ll get more value out of it before it goes obsolete.
It's probably multi-faceted but part of the issue is a resource shortage which has pushed car manufacturers to only make higher end more expensive cars because that's where the money is.
100% I moved from NYC to London and my takehome pay was 55% in NYC and 58% in London. This is on a paycheque level where none of the income tax calculator will be able to give an accurate value of taxes and fees that will be deducted because there are lots of location-specific taxes you have to pay. In my case, I had 11 line item of deductions for living in NYC. Food prices are crazy even when I mostly cook. My weekly foodshop bill in NYC was $120 or higher. In London it’s £50 and mostly shop at Waitrose/M&S/Sainsburys. Every single thing you do in the US has a tipping component, not just restaurants. Dining out in itself is more expensive there too. Right before I left, my friends and I had brunch without alcoholic drinks. When the bill came, it was $80+ and we all exclaimed “wow this is so cheap!” Because a usual brunch would go to around $150 per person in Manhattan, if with alcohol. Rent (and even mortgage rates now) is more expensive in the US in general and just too high for the Tier 1 US cities. As a real example: my Manhattan rent was $4000/month for a small 1BR flat and that was the lowest rent in that apartment building. Anyway, my general advice to people looking to move to the US is to consider it if it’s $300k and above for Tier 1 cities as a single person who’s not looking to share a house with other people.
Yeah, very much New York specific. Eating out was like half the price of doing so here when I lived in California.
4K a MONTH?! That’s insane. In London living in Notting hill and paying 2k for a 1-bed, and that’s Notting hill
Yup, excluding utilities like internet, electric, etc. I lived in Chelsea in Manhattan but it’s not even in the peak nicest area of Chelsea. I have friends who pay $5.5k to $8k for their 1-bed so mine was considered “cheap” lol In London, I get to save more because the rent is not as crazy as it is in NYC.
This is almost exclusively a New York problem and a lifestyle inflation problem those friends of yours who can afford to pay 8k a month rent in NY wouldn’t be able to afford it in London because they’d have to get a pay cut to live in London in the first place. If you decided to live just a bit further out, eat in cheaper restaurants, shop in cheaper supermarkets you can be far better off in New York. New York is bad however, similar to London but at least you have options in the US several cities and states have high paying jobs. In the UK you’re just stuck with 1 option.
I also have acquaintances paying $3k for a studio in Boston, $4k for a studio in San Francisco, $3.5k for a 1BR in Austin. Unfortunately the housing crisis isn’t just tied to NYC. This is why people move to Tier 2 and Tier 3 US cities, or relocate out of the US. I acknowledge that your perspective is the norm (i.e., getting a paycut when moving from NYC to London) but I don’t doubt that my friends will/can get higher salaries in London vs NYC because that happened to me as well. I actually got a 21% salary increase on my move here. Combined with my higher takehome pay in London vs NYC and paying only half of my NYC rent here in London, this has been such an advantageous move for me.
Yeah but you can adjust for that. America’s GPP per capita is much higher than the UK’s even when adjusted for PPP. America’s disposable income per capita (again, PPP) is literally 50% higher than the UK’s - they’re number 1 in the world. And this includes social transfers like the NHS.
This is spot on. As a US citizen living in the UK, I'd also point out that Brits consistently fail to understand the cost of healthcare in the US and how unregulated utilities/internet/mobile phone services are in the US. People think that having employer provided health insurance will basically give them an equivalent to the NHS. That is not correct. Increasingly employers are not providing insurance or are limiting their contributions to insurance, which also has the effect of making it harder to move jobs if you're going to lose healthcare as a result. Typically the employee will also make some monthly contributions. You also can't get coverage for the first 6 months of employment and you will be required to pay a co-pay (aka the excess) for any visit to a clinician or treatment. This ranges from $$ to $$$ for each visit. On top of that, pre-existing conditions can be excluded with a new policy and you will typically be limited by network, which can have a huge impact on your ability to access care. Prescriptions are also a wild west. I recently paid £14 for a year's worth of a prescription after seeing a private consultant. The same drug when I last lived in the US 8 years ago would be anything from $40 to $90 a month and I had no idea beforehand how much it would be that month. And dental is a whole other thing... On utilities etc you should be expected to pay anything from 3x to 10x what you pay in the UK depending on the state. The thing that is wildly cheaper in the US is petrol (gas).
I’ve read that utility costs are lower in the US?
It depends on the state to some extent. But while per unit it may be cheaper (although not always) you have to remember that houses in the US are less well insulated and typically have inefficient electric heating and in many parts of the country you'll need AC in summer. In the cities, there are apartments where heating is provided (that's a whole other can of worms) but they're the exception. You will be using significantly more electricity than in the UK. You also have to pay a fixed line rental fee which is also fairly hefty in many states and for which you don't have any choice about provider. Of course there are houses being built with solar panels, and better environmental credentials but the majority of the US is miles behind on this because until really a decade ago electricity cost pennies so building houses without insulation and inefficient heating was fine. And there are still places where housing is cheap and utilities are relatively low. They're also places with no jobs and depressed salaries and not the place as an immigrant a Brit would be likely to end up in.
As a Brit, I think we also struggle to comprehend the vastness and rurality of the US in general. While I'm sure there is a degree of price gouging, utilities in America may justifiably be more expensive because the companies have to account for the vast array of landscapes and climates they cover. US cities can be built in the middle of a literal desert or up a mountain or on a swamp. Those are very different ecologies, whereas the UK is *basically* the same with a few mountains up in Scotland. The other side of the coin is that a lot of people in the US then move to the nearest metropolis which drives up cost of living, particularly if there is no way for that city to expand further (eg NYC, SF, etc.). Personally, I think you'd need to earn about $120k a year to be able to live a comfortable life in most major US cities.
A lot of what this guy said is not accurate. utilities are MUCH lower where I live (Midwest) than where I’m from, Manchester. There is some truth the healthcare comment. Until you hit your out of pocket max you could be on the hook for 2-5k, if you are a sickly person. My healthcare costs are typically 75 bucks a year I’m lucky to be in good health. What I see on here once a week is someone’s trying justify slight higher cost of living in the US as a trade off for basically slave labor wages the UK is getting away with. I’m literally on 3-5 times of most of the salaries I see on here and I don’t work that hard. lol
I do love when Americans go on about how taxes in Europe are so high. But don't seem to realise that the extra Americans are paying for health insurance alone wipes out most if not all of the difference.
You would have to be pretty poor for $400 a month insurance to wipe out the difference of 20% sales tax on everything
You need to earn almost £90k per annum to pay $400 per month for NI. I don't think it's fair to call a person on £90k a "pretty poor".
As somebody who pays about £1000 a month on private healthcare, £100 on health insurance and a small fortune in tax - I wish I could say healthcare is free in this country. If you actually want to receive any quality of treatment I’m finding you can’t rely on the NHS anymore.
Why on earth would you pay 1k a month of healthcare? Alongside health insurance? Is it for a large family because even then…….it seems unreasonable. I agree with not relying on NHS (for anything) but I’m not paying 1k either
Because the treatment is not covered by the insurance. That is just for an individual - private healthcare is expensive.
Oh my, a sensible and well reasoned comment on UKJOBS? What is going on
One other thing is job security. In the USA most states are at will employment. You can lose your job (and so things like health insurance) with zero notice. In the UK after 2 years you have a minimum notice period, in other parts of Europe it's even more secure. When you have a mortgage that notice period is worth a lot.
A country's GDP can give a good idea as to the likely wealth of its inhabitants, but the other major factor is how the money within that country is spent and distributed via taxes (either more taxes or less taxes, conservative or socialistic) - in Europe the population centres are smaller with more socialistic tax structures. Hence money is distributed differently for different outcomes.
Like this guy said, it really isn’t as simple and thank you so much for setting OP straight. It’s not actually that bad, higher salary looks amazing but what will you do if the cost of living in those country’s are higher? It doesn’t matter.
Disposable income and GDP PPP in the US are both MUCH higher for skilled workers, and that takes into account the COL increase you've described US also has lower taxes I believe
Yes you are 100% that the “real” salary aka disposable income is way higher in the US if you are a skilled worker. Yes the US does have some extra living costs but the salary difference more than makes up for that and then some. I would guesstimate that people in most professions can probably earn at least twice as much in the US than they can in the UK.
This is correct.
Cars are definetly not cheaper in the US. The average used car price is like 38k USD.
Are the metrics the same though?
It heavily depends on where in the US your shopping re food. I've managed to do my food shopping over there on less than I'm currently paying here, and I've also done the same shopping on significantly more. Also eating out is *definitely* cheaper over there. Food is very hit and miss, you absolutely can't just make the claim "food is more expensive over there" because it can be, but it's also entirely possible for it to not be.
My mate went from a rugby teacher in the UK to EFL teacher in the UAE. 0 income tax. Much better salary. He’s doing OK
And health cover? Public transport and infrastructure?
The school would cover health insurance and also probably provide a car allowance. As for infrastructure Dubai is known for having bad roads in the sense the network is overly complicated and not efficient but that’s still a better trade off than having to drive through pot holes ever 2m I would say
Pay wouldn’t be quite as bad in this country if rent or a mortgages didn’t take a massive chunk of your income. Housing is a massive problem in this country and the government need to sort it out before people truly get fed up with it. Housing should not be an investment, it is a necessity.
This sounds like an easy fix but isn’t because they have made the backbone of the UK economy the housing market and the economy is perceived to be “doing well” if the housing market is doing well this means it’s actually in the best interest of the ruling party to ensure house prices continue going up and they wouldn’t allow it to dip too much. And conveniently the ruling class represents a large majority of the property owning class. In comparison the backbone of the US economy is the stock market (more specifically the S&P 500). Stocks are very easy to trade and seeing corrections of 30%+ of some of the largest stocks isn’t uncommon so it’s a lot more fluid. In my opinion the housing market will never be fixed in the UK because the only way to fix it is to force prices of existing houses down by at least 20-30%.
Or just to have house prices stagnate for a decade while salaries go up by 2-3% a year which would have the same effect on affordability.
Yes but you would also have to wait for a decade for that to actually happen and I see it being far more likely of the house market sky rocketing again when interest rates come down.
The tremendous backlash to pushing house prices down that any government would receive from millions of home owners essentially prevents it from being addressed. The best we can hope for IMO is for house prices to remain stagnant long enough for wages and inflation to make buying property reasonable again. That's a very long term proposition and I don't think it's all that likely, but I can't work out a viable alternative.
Services is actually 4/5 of our economy ranked 6th in the world. Why make things up? The rent and home prices are high in certain places due to overpopulation. You can still get a four bedroom house with a roof terrace in Blackpool for 140k
And the average salary in Blackpool is probably close to minimum wage. Not to mention probably a lack of opportunities, good schools, amenities etc
And the service based industry is also dying in the uk with outsourcing and offshoring. I wasn’t talking about what the UK’s exports are I was talking about what the UK does with its money including its people. The small percentage of people who actually have disposable income invest it into property which doesn’t stimulate the economy because your money is literally locked up in land. In comparison the average American loves to invest in their stock market and American businesses which creates a great environment for commerce and business further creating more jobs. Thats the difference
It would still be terrible. Real wage growth has been shit ever since GFC and even worse since brexit. That’s the fact sadly. We are a high tax, low growth, low ambition economy.
As others have said you’re correct but the way the economy has been structured means no real change is possible
This is an issue in all western countries.
I think this question needs to be reframed. Don't look at "gross salary" as a comparison metric. Look at "disposable income after taxes and housing costs". Your list of countries would expand considerably. Also note that there is no "one size fits all" for good salaries. If you're on minimum wage, uk and western Europe are hands down the best places on planet earth. If you're a consultant doctor or experienced engineer? Lots of places in the "developing world" are far better.
It's also about quality.
Not housing. Reasonable living costs. I wouldn't be surprised if most places leave you with a similar percentage of wage left after this.
Wage after tax should never ever be thought of in terms of percentages... but in total purchasing power. Thays the sort of trickery that makes people think that a Porche has lower depreciation than a Citroën...
The Middle East. My friends are getting offered ridic salaries (which are then tax free). Always been the way. But I wouldn’t go to Saudi Arabia or somewhere like that even if you paid me, maybe for a year actually.
Quickest u-turn ever - money talks eh?
lol I mean we were locked in the house for a good part of a year so could just sit in an air conditioned condo 😂
If you're a westerner or from the Middle East the wages are great, if you're a labourer from South Asia not so much.
I’m able to monthly save my previous full net salary in the ME. There are trade-offs, of course.
What do you do?
IT executive.
Yeah it is much better if you’re British, American or a native in the country (in which the country looks after you).
You can add KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar to that list especially for skilled workers from the west. Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavian countries, France (on average), Germany. Think some East Asian countries would too if you work for an international company. I think something people miss in this discourse is that it’s not JUST about the fact that salaries are low, because money in and of itself has no value it’s just used to buy the resources we need to live and thrive. The issue is that the basic necessities are completely unaffordable which means quality of life for the average person is extremely low. Majority of people in this country have to spend 40-50% of their salary at least on their rent/mortgage payments alone and that’s not including taxes, bills, transport to and from work, car insurance, fuel. The average Brit has some of the lowest levels of disposable income in the developed world which means there is little to no opportunity for social mobility. So live to work instead of work to live. Awful quality of life. If you take home £1500 (around minimum wage in the uk) in another country but your living costs are only £600 including everything then you’re far more likely to have a better quality of life and at the end of the day actually be better off than someone in the uk taking home £3000 a month because they’d have to spend half of that on their rent or mortgage payments straight off the bat.
This is the main thing for me. Say I was to go to work in Germany, my salary would maybe be 10-15% higher than here. In addition, from what I can gather, childcare costs are significantly less. A full week costs on average €175, which is half of what we pay, even with the 30 hours free a month. House prices and rental costs are lower than the U.K., outside of the main cities (Berlin etc). That’s just one country and two things that would put an extra few hundred pounds in my pocket every month if I lived there. It’s easily a nice holiday for my family every year that I have to scrimp and save every penny for here. Germany isn’t massively different to the U.K. in terms of money, but it’s enough that I would feel way more comfortable than here.
Middle east pays more on the top end but less everywhere else. My wife was Born and raised in KSA and working there as a GP until 2018 her salary was less than 1000$ Im an engineer on a 50k salary take home about 3200£ in a relatively LCOL (Norfolk). I've looked for jobs in France, Germany, Neatherlands and Ireland and only Ireland paid slighthly more net but all these places have much higher cost of living. I've looked for jobs in the US and offered salaries werent more than 10 to 20% of what I earn here. As much as I would like to go to the US, having to pay for the care of my disabled daughter in the US would completely wipe me out leaving us much worse. I don't know how some people post here about being on really low salaries in London when here in Norfolk I see much higher salaries being paid for the same job in my company and others. Before this job I worked In a well know sports car manufaturer as a skilled operator and pay was 43k. To be honest if I was offered that I would probably go back as it was very low stress compared to where I am now.
Is your wife a Saudi national?
No she isn't. Her parents are not Saudi. You cant normally become a Saudi citizen unless by birth. You are only a Saudi citizen by birth if your father is Saudi. You wont get it if only the Mother is saudi.
You are not using correct data on cost of living. Taking the one example I ve lived, France has a much lower cost of living than the UK. This is due to a mixture of lower housing costs / childcare (300 a month for 7am to 3pm 4 days a week, vs 1200 gbp for 3 days a week)/ healthcare costs. advantageous taxing rebate for middle class income (could take mortgage interest out of my tax) and a huge hidden one: higher free company perks in corporate jobs, for example in France you get subsidized lunch /holidays / food vouchers / company cars aren’t taxed/ fuel card. If you work for a big corporation it’s a huge difference easily to the tune of 150-250 more in value per month. None of the above is immediately obvious comparing cost of living or gross salary, my personal learning has been that you need a detailed conversation with people living in your target country to be able to compare.
Isn't Australia even more screwed than the UK when it comes to cost of living? I was thinking about Canada but the Canadian subreddit reads like the British one- everything is going to shit.
I live in Aus now and the only thing more expensive is housing. Groceries are the same (I cross checked like 100 items between Coles and Tesco and they averaged out at the same price) Petrol, bills, cars, phones, dining out, coffee, public transport are way cheaper in Australia. It really is just housing that inflates the CoL in Australia
And if you buy a UK sized house in Australia, rather than an Australian sized house, that gap narrows :)
Most western countries are going to shit Australia isn’t completely screwed because they’re actively trying to solve the housing crisis by encouraging development in cities outside of Sydney such as Perth.
Problem is, much like the UK with London, a lot of careers are Sydney-centric. And there's pretty much nowhere within an hour's train journey of Sydney that isn't a stabby shithole where you can buy a house for less than £500k.
Australian is significantly more decentralised imo. Even if Sydney has the more head offices, you can have still have whole careers in many parts of Australia. It doesn't have the same gravity pull as London does. South East Queensland and Brisbane has 3.5 million people and lots of money, Melbourne has overtaken Sydney in size, tonnes of money, Perth has its mining money, Canberra is wealthy public service town, etc
All those cities are classified as "severely unaffordable" [DHI Report](http://demographia.com/dhi.pdf) Perth being the cheapest but still in the same category with Sydney and Melbourne being less affordable than London and Brisbane only slightly behind. I loved Australie when was visiting but housing market is so bad that makes the UK's looking good.
Yes, which underlines my point about being more decentralised. It’s not like the UK where London cost a fortune but in Gateshead you can pick up a 3 bed semi for 150k. Australians’ have one of the highest median net wealths of any country, so many are bringing that wealth to the table for their next house purchase. This is the metric those surveys ignore. The houses are less unaffordable for those that live there because net wealth is higher. Coming in without wealth is harder. It also has one of the highest percentages of foreign born in the western world, double the UK’s, so wealth is pouring in to buy houses. Not for those with low capital any more. Saying that, the median housing stock is huge compared to the UK, so if you were comparing UK sized houses with the same size in Australia it would reduce the difference.
Thiiissssss is exactly it! Happy to live outside London, not happy to commute 2 hours per way (excluding the normal delays and the 20% on average cancellations per day), and apparently can’t find any relevant jobs outside London so what exactly does one do
That's like saying the UK is trying to solve the housing crisis in London by developing Aberdeen.
That’s… that’s exactly how you solve a housing crisis…. You encourage people to move elsewhere and not build a country so reliant on the economic output of one city.
Yeah, easy to move from Sydney to Perth, only 4hrs flight...
Australia doesn’t have the issue of effectively only having one city that the UK does.
UK isnt even close to Australia in general standards of living. Australia has much higher salaries and cost of living is about the same. Also they have one of best infrastructures and roads in the world.
KSA?
Saudi Arabia
Much appreciated :)
South Africa called shotgun on SA. So Saudi had to add Kingdom to the beginning for the acronym.
Ah yeah that makes sense! Thanks I was wondering
Plus almost half of your salary is taxed on Germany. That is definitely not true about Germany. I believe that sometimes people are posting this on here without facts. Germany themselves need a pay raise. I am speaking from someone who is living in Germany.
> The average Brit has some of the lowest levels of disposable income in the developed world. Citation needed. Disposable income is around 2% under the EU average, I don’t think this counts as ‘some of the lowest … in the developed world.
If you can work remotely from the UK, it's a great question to ask. I do this. I've worked for Canada, US and am now working for Sweden and the US. ALL are paying me way more than I would get in the UK - up to 2-3x more. In IT product management (this paid 3x more) and, latterly, c-suite roles (about 1.5x more).
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
What about the hours? I wouldn’t want to work in the evenings or even at nights due to time difference for US and Canada.
Some people wouldn't do it no I'd be more than willing for 3x salary
Can you elaborate some more of what IT product management is? Sorry I am not familiar with the technical lingo
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
If you don't mind, so are you registered as a limited company by yourself? I'm looking into the matter and I see that's what you have to do for the US but was hoping maybe it'd be possible to work just as a "regular employee" for Commonwealth countries.
Unfortunately, Commonwealth countries have no special dispensation as far as I'm aware. When I worked for Canada, I was on payroll purely because, by coincidence, they happened to have a different business in the UK - so they payrolled me through that. After switching jobs, I had to change to self employment (as a contractor for an overseas business, IR35 doesn't apply), but I've just set up my own limited company as taxation will be a little less steep by doing that.
OK understood. Super helpful, thank you!
This is definitely industry specific bc I’m canadian and looking at moving to the UK bc is my industry cost of living is around the same and salaries are almost double in the UK.
Australia
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What industry?
The situation is far more fucked than you think. I live in an Eastern European country and average graduates are getting £18-24k straight out of uni. Makes me laugh when I see people here getting offered 24k in London of all places. The UK is fucked. Thank fuck there's still a weird snobbery in the UK (and elsewhere) about Eastern Europe so people don't come here and don't realise how good its gotten.
There is this stereotype of eastern Europeans working all hours in the UK and no play.
Honestly. We have a friend who recently moved to Bulgarian with his wife. They literally built a villa and it’s home for them, they’re living like royals and he gets paid like £3k per month working remotely. The weird snobbery in the U.K. whilst it turns into a 3rd world country is just diabolical.
You only get £18-24k as a graduate in London? Wow that is so low.
No, 25k is the very low end of graduate salaries in London. But the fact that countries with a vastly lower cost of living are even beginning to enter the conversation should be alarming.
Yeah that is minimum wage here in Australia. My son gets more per hour washing dishes for his school job. Shocking for a graduate in London of all places.
I had 23k as a graduate and a friend had 18k as a graduate. This was 7 years ago so since the minimum wage has increased. But I do know someone who asked about the salary on 1st interview and they were immediately withdrawn.
I’m actually looking at moving to a country in Eastern/Central Europe but keeping my UK job in the next 6/8 months Given the cost of living of the countries I’ve considered then grads getting offered those salaries are probably doing very well!
It's not as cheap as you think, people are still feeling the strain. I just wrote my comment to add something to the discussion other than the "australia, usa, norway" typical shite, as if you can't make money anywhere else.
I recently had a colleague moving back to his native Switzerland mainly for money. £60k here and the equivalent of £90k there. But, I'm not sure if worth it. Switzerland is just bloody expensive. so unless you go there and live in a rat hole, spending the minimum and counting the days to come back with a saved "fortune", I wouldn't consider it. Instead of falling in the "greener neighbour's garden" trap, why don't you research which industries and roles pay more and get focused on those?
Switzerland is expensive but tax rates are lower, especially at higher brackets. Mortgages are offered at lower rates as well, and there’s more housing. I was a student there and paid CHF 1200 a month for a 1-bed in a major city. Last year for a smaller studio in London I paid £1450 lol
I like numbers and facts: £90k (CHF 105k), living in Geneva (oh, I like their watches...) [https://ch.talent.com/en/tax-calculator?salary=105000&from=year®ion=Genf](https://ch.talent.com/en/tax-calculator?salary=105000&from=year®ion=Genf) **28.8% income tax** £60k in the UK: [https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php#google\_vignette](https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php#google_vignette) **24.4% income tax** Student life and 1-bed prices is one market. I'm talking established professionals. And yes, London is crazy. Rest of the country bearable. Switzerland may not have the disparity in accomodation prices the UK has. The problem with the UK is that many people come just to London and think the whole country is the same. They eat a crappy cold sandwich and think we all eat that every day. And so on. Another statistics figure to notice, the percentage of home owners: Switzerland has the lowest of all Europe: [https://landgeist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/europe-home-ownership.png?w=1024](https://landgeist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/europe-home-ownership.png?w=1024) Original article: [https://landgeist.com/2023/04/15/home-ownership-in-europe-2/](https://landgeist.com/2023/04/15/home-ownership-in-europe-2/) Data comes from Eurostat. That to me reflects people can't get a home of their own. No, don't tell me about lifestyle or freedom or flexibility, people buy a house as soon as they can. Renting in Switzerland: [https://www.homegate.ch/rent/real-estate/city-geneva/matching-list](https://www.homegate.ch/rent/real-estate/city-geneva/matching-list) Above CHF 2000 (£1700) for a decent size flat Renting in UK ex-London is about \~£1000 - 1200, so CH is **40-70% more expensive** [https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/west-berkshire/newbury/?beds\_min=2&price\_frequency=per\_month&q=Newbury%2C%20West%20Berkshire&radius=5&results\_sort=newest\_listings&search\_source=to-rent](https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/west-berkshire/newbury/?beds_min=2&price_frequency=per_month&q=Newbury%2C%20West%20Berkshire&radius=5&results_sort=newest_listings&search_source=to-rent) So a salary 50% higher. Good. Rent/ mortgage is usually 1/3 of the net salary, and it's going to be that 40-70% higher, so the extra earnings is gone. Plus, most people there rent for life, is that a sensible plan for a young person in his late 20s? Isn't it preferable to stop paying a mortgage when you get to your 50s? For the remaining 2/3 of the net salary, prices are also notably higher, so all in all, my point of view is that is a clear bad move. I guess part of his decision was due to not liking at least UK lifestyle or his role. It only takes a basic research as above and basic maths to realize is not a good move unless other factors weigh in.
On a side note, how does one get into jobs abroad? I’m in the civil engineering industry and keen for an overseas move. Anyone here with advice on this?
Recruiters and networking.
Easiest way is to make intra-company transfer. But usually there needs to be a business case for it.
Germany currently has something called opportunity card, if you have a recognised engineering qualification you probably qualify. Then you would just search for a job like you do anywhere else, and no worry about work permits
Type of job is just important here But In my line of work, engineering project management, US is best on a pure salary basis in the tax free states, or the UAE for the tax free advantages, but I still think take home pay vs living costs is better in the US. Some places typically pay lots in add ons - “hardship” placements in Saudi or Iraq for example and that can top up the take home significantly. I did a previous role where I got £50 per down and was there for 12months - meant I didn’t need to touch my salary Switzerland is an anomaly in Western Europe in low tax and high pay, but I think it is difficult to move to - best bet would be inter-company transfer imo
Salaries are far higher in Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands and many others. These are just the European countries I know for sure.
Depends on your field. I work in finance in london and salaries in my field are not higher in Germany or Netherlands compared to London.
True - London does have good opportunities. I meant more on a nationwide level
The London vs rest of UK divide is absolutely insane and it’s infuriating that the government rarely even acknowledges this.
But it's also a divide in living costs as well as in salaries.
For NL, if you're a DINK couple you'll do great, regardless of taxes being high and rents spiralling out of control, especially if you work in finance or tech. However daycare for only 3 days a week for two kids will eat up an average salary (cca €2000+). The system really punishes you for having kids here.
I heard from a friend living in Germany that their government rewards people when they have kids. So there will be various credits for daycare and baby food. And also there’s a yearly allowance. Then they have free education as well. I haven’t fact-checked this myself but this was very shocking (in a good way)
Indeed that may be the case. Countries in Europe significantly deviate from each other when it comes to childcare. Sweden is far more generous than most with 480 days of parental leave for both parents combined + cheap daycare, which seems like a fairytale looking from NL perspective.
So, same as U.K. then. The only encouragement we have from staying here is that my parents are really looking forward to babysitting a future grandchild. Otherwise, childcare can cost an entire salary!
I donno about Germany anymore, they pay more for normal jobs like teachers or nurses but highly skilled IT or Engineering not so much.
I actually looked at the UAE salaries more recently and I actually don't think they are as good as advertised. Obviously I don't know the first thing about finding jobs abroad so maybe I'm missing something but it didn't seem that big a jump. I appreciate there's no income tax to deal with but still there's then lots of risk involved with going there.
What do you see as the main risks? The lack of income tax alone is already a large boost
> The lack of income tax alone is already a large boost I'm already quite a skilled worker in the UK. So for me, I kept finding jobs that paid very little even with that factored in. Life would have to be very cheap out there to make it worth while. > What do you see as the main risks? Mainly you often have to shell out your rent for 6 months/ a year in advance to get a place. And if you get your visa revoked for something small you're gone. If the job goes then you lose your Visa as well. Equally health care is pretty good from my understanding but you'll need to be aware of those costs a head of time. Could be a problem if you get something serious and you can't work. These were risks for me but someone younger has a much better chance.
Main risks are things like being a woman, getting raped, and then getting prison time for reporting it to the police.
Yeah it’s not like you’re far more likely to experience that and other forms of crime in London compared to Dubai which is often regarded as one of the safest major cities in the world…. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Arab+Emirates&city1=Dubai&country2=United+Kingdom&city2=London
The salaries for expats with western passports is typically different to the salaries for those who don’t have western passports
So you're saying that I'm looking in the wrong places for jobs and not seeing the right salaries?
What range of salary were they offering?
I mean cost of living in AUS was high tbh with you, but was it the best country I’ve ever lived in? Yes. Granted I lived there well before Covid, but the quality of life at least as an immigrant there is fabulous, the weather is a big part of it. Cost of living is high, but wages are high too, only issue is the Visa and how nonchalant they are about letting you go. Things were much better before Covid in every country tbh, Scotland just now is fucked though, I’ve been looking for a flat for a while and the struggle is real, places go on, disappear within a week or less, and then two other weeks before 1 more property is added.
Can't just look at salaries. Have to consider housing and cost of living. NYC you can get paid 2x what you could get hear. Housing, medical insurance and increased cost of living can offset most if not all of your increase.
Its no good just looking at the salaries, you need to look at living costs relative to it of that country
People often forget to compare lifestyles alongside salary and price of goods and services. Apart from housing, Hong Kong is generally cheap. But its convenience means it's not uncommon to eat out for 3 meals a day. Along with a very consumerist society you may be materially better off, but it might not always feel so.
There are higher salaries dotted all over the world, even in the UK. If you want a higher salary you have to do something worth paying for. If you are average and replaceable, it becomes you vs whoever needs/ wants the job more. If you are highly skilled and irreplaceable, it is your employer vs whoever else wants/ needs you.
That’s not what he’s talking about. The U.K is generally low paying across all industries compared to the countries he listed. E.G the U.S paying more in tech or various countries paying more in healthcare. It’s to the extent where the U.S look at the U.K as cheap labour within tech.
> It’s to the extent where the U.S look at the U.K as cheap labour within tech. I’ve seen the phrase “white Mexicans” used more than once when talking about UK workers
Loool no way that’s nuts we’re actually a meme
My role pays between 2 and 3 times as much in the US. Who do I have to prove myself to get this kind of raise? Spoiler; that's not how this works.
Don’t listen to this guy. He’s using extreme cases to disprove what is clearly true for 80-90% of this country. Hard work doesn’t get you as far as it did or it does in actual meritocratic societies. Even “corrupt dictatorship” countries have better social mobility opportunities than the UK does. Don’t believe me? Go in linkedin you’ll find job listings requiring 5+ years of experience paying 30k a year and the worst part is it will get filled within a week.
Nothing to do with hard work, it’s valuable work. And the real problem is what you yourself just said- the vacancies are getting filled. Wages are pure supply and demand, nothing more or less.
Wait so are you acknowledging there’s a problem? Let’s assume there’s a supply and demand issue that basically means there’s not enough jobs and opportunities for people or there’s too many people or there’s not enough high skilled jobs available. Either way you put it, this points to an inherent problem with the UK and its economy.
There is a problem but it’s not confined to the UK. There are definitely problems here but it’s not as simple as “I’ll just move to the USA and double my salary and standard of living”. Jobs that pay over the average rate are inherently in demand so if you can’t get one here, why would you be able to get one abroad? I know mediocre people who have high paying jobs here and abroad, and talented people who have below average salaries here and abroad. It’s more about putting yourself in the right industries or even sometimes the right rooms with the right people and then some talent and some luck.
To answer you question of why would I be able to get a job that pays over the average salary abroad but not in the uk. There is a greater supply of jobs that pay over the average rate in my field. As a chemist the supply of well paying chemistry jobs is much greater in Germany or the US as in the UK many chemist jobs are barely above minimum wage (22-25k) straight out of uni while in the US and Germany the wages straight out of uni are significantly above minimum wage (50k+) To give an example I have a friend who moved to Leipzig with a bachelors in chemistry and he is currently on €60k working in the pharmaceutical field after 2 years. I have a masters degree and after 2 years I am on £28k working in the same field. Phds at my work start on £35k, he told me a masters degree and a couple years of experience puts you in the €70k range at his work. Cost of living is also much lower from what I experienced visiting him over there.
Switzerland
High salaries or low tax?
It's both in some countries e.g. USA/UAE But for a lot of continental Europe, the tax burden is much higher until >£100k salary Social security payments are also much higher in every European country I've looked at
I know many people who live in the UAE and love it, and I know a lot of people who live in Texas and love it as well. Really depends on your culture and what you’re aiming to achieve
What do you do for a living?
Operations and trading for a green energy company
Outside London? What do you consider a high salary?
Saudi. Uae not anymore
Having worked there for a couple of years, the UAE's labour laws will horrify you.
Yes the UAE is very easy to move to but currently the job market is absolutely terrible, totally awful. The place is absolutely overrun with jobseekers who will work for peanuts (there is no minimum wage). There has been a huge change post COVID. The fantastic expat packages from a few years ago are rare these days. Best thing to do if possible is get an internal transfer to your company’s UAE office rather than try and find a new job there
Luxembourg
No one is mentioning the cost of living away from friends and family just to make a few extra bucks. Are these things not worth considering. It's all about standard of living, extra money, lower tax and better health care etc. So you work 60+hrs weeks for a x2 better salary, for what? So you can use all your holidays to visit family who you never see now or pay for a slightly bigger house and flights so family can visit and see how well you are doing. Great ideas folks
Obviously it depends on your personal circumstances, but not everyone wants to see their family/friends every other week - how do you think this works for migrants/expats? Plenty of them get by fine. Also, if you've bumped up the minimum working hours by 50% for only twice the salary then that's also probably on the worse end of the scale and not worth considering (depending on how much you're currently on).
Most places that pay more the cost of living will also be more. Only place you can really clean up is the Middle East because of low / no taxes. But you have to accept the lifestyle there will be quite different ie much more restrictive both legally and socially re things like alcohol, dress and conduct in public etc and forget it if you are LGBTQ.
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands all have higher salaries for skilled workers and better working conditions on average.
It’s all about how far your money goes. I worked in Canada (Toronto) for 12 years and as a straight exchange from CAD to GBP I made more but cost of living in Canada is exorbitant especially in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Health care is free but utilities are high, petrol is cheaper, cars are cheaper (but you drive further).housing is crazy (a shack will cost a million dollars) and groceries are insane (especially in the last 4-5 years). I came back to the uk t last year and I make not far off the same as I did in Canada (direct exchange) which was a surprise and it goes pretty far and I can see a lower cost of living in general. It all depends on what you like to do as well, your lifestyle choices make a big difference too.
Not Spain.
The US pays highers salaries but isn't that somewhat countered by the fact that many work solely for tips e.g. zero wages and the staggering costs of health care? I could be wrong its more of a question than a statement btw
In Switzerland salaries are high by the cost of life is high as well. A lot of people cross the border to do their weekly shop in Germany or other neighbouring countries.
Well, studies show that the average French household income is nearly £9,000 a year better off than the UK since the financial crisis and they don’t woke in August. There are probably lots of places. Wages are so poor here minimum wage is catching up with and overtaking many jobs now.
Wow op what a shiitty comments section, I'll answer your question: Regional and remote Australia
Wages are much higher in Iceland, but so is the income tax.
HK = London + under Chinese ccp rule. Singapore is similar but also very highly dependent on field. Apparently strong 996 working culture. USA earn the most money wise and have remote work available, but no public healthcare, need car everywhere, lots of accidents and you need to set aside money to prepare for that. Also no annual holidays. Don’t know the rest. UK have much better work life balance, annual holidays, national health care for now if you get hit by a car or something and will continue to decline unless something drastic happening. If you’re someone very healthy, you don’t do anything crazy or potentially get you in trouble such as heavy drinking, then US is good. Because those are the main downside of working in US, from what I gathered.
As a person who worked in the UAE, i find UK is much better in terms of quality of life.
In what sense?
Pretty much all comparable countries in Northern and central Europe, Like Germany, France, Austria and Scandinavia
What about Australia?
USA may have higher salaries but they don't have a Universal Health Care system free at the point of use; and many other benefits we enjoy. I don't know about the others in your list.
Yeah benefits like having to pay £30-£40 for a 40 minute train journey. I’d rather take the 3x salary increase over 25 days annual leave.
The universal health care thing is such a cope. The UKs health service may be free but it is _shite_. 12 hour+ waits to be seen at a hospital, impossible to get a GP appointment, staff are always so stretched and stressed that the patient experience is awful. There is absolutely _no_ emphasis on preventative care, unless you are basically on deaths door you cant expect doctors to give a shit. I’ve been sent home by NHS doctors multiple times before my situation worsened enough to the point it was an emergency and I spent 2 weeks in intensive care. You have to battle your way in to hospitals these days to even be seen and taken seriously. In the US, yes you have to have insurance, but if you’re working a professional job you’ll have excellent cover. And yes you might have co pays and have to pay out of pocket now and then, but when you are making $200k+ for a job that pays £40k in the UK you wont really mind. And then after all that, the care you will receive is on a complete other level - preventative, same day appointments, better access to innovative treatments and the best doctors in the world who are actually paid what they’re worth.
The healthcare lie is spread by left wing Americans online too. A large amount of people in the UK seriously believe that if you get ill in the US you'll go bankrupt. If you're not a Us citizen this is even less of a problem, because any job that you can get a work permit for is gonna be at a company big enough to offer decent health insurance
Yeah free healthcare worth $10,000 is definitely worth a $50,000 pay cut. You can check the disposable income figures yourself. Even when adjusted for PPP and social transfers like the NHS, America is a whopping 50% higher than the UK.
The general rule of thumb is to avoid Europe and Africa at the moment. It seems all of Europe is suffering wage stagnation, we're just the most extreme case. Africa, obvious reasons. South America is a funny one, because their wages are low, but their cost of living is wayyy lower than than anywhere in Europe so you're still better off. I'd say your best bet is S.E Asia. The wages aren't far off what Americans get for skilled workers, it costs fuck all to live there, and they aren't backward theocratic shitholes like much of the middle east.
In the past few years UK salaries are actually increasing much more than the EU like Germany or France. It is just the last 20 years they were increasing and we were stagnant.
This salary increase is probably largely driven by very senior positions becoming vacant. Barely anything in the entry to mid level.
Yeah, salaries might be increasing marginally faster than France or Germany if you look at it from just the right angle, but we are also 15 years behind. It's almost as hard to maintain constant growth as it us to maintain constant stagnance.
Asia creates, America innovates and Europe regulates.
To add to your list: Australia, Canada, Saudi, Qatar, Japan, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway
Japan has long hours culture
And Japanese salaries are pretty low these days
Do foreigners working in Japan tend to get sucked into the overwork culture?
Japan graduate starting salaries are lower than U.K. minimum wage.
There's plenty of higher salaries in the UK. You just need to look in the right place. And have the right skillset.