An average software engineer in Germany only makes ~3000 euro per month after tax and even less in other European countries.
* https://www.morgenpost.de/vermischtes/article233549815/aldi-...
14%, over more than 6 years...: "Compared to 2015, they were even 14.1 percent higher in August 2021" from your article.
That's not even 2.5% per year. Central bank's target is usually around 2% of inflation per year, this is considered a "healthy" inflation rate. So nothing to see here.
However it has been +4% in just the last year, which while not being anywhere near dramatic is high.
> (not confuse with inflation)
What do you mean? This is inflation
Now compare to the "rich" American ~$4500/month for childcare until age 5, and lets not start with healthcare, and average cost of an apartment
In the US, healthcare is provided as an additional benefit on top of your gross salary. Whereas in Europe it is taken out of your gross wages in the form of tax.
Obviously there are still issues with copays etc, but the bulk of the cost is actually additional to your salaries.
On apartments, I'm not sure how true that is these days. You can easily pay 2k+ EUR/month for a nice apartment in Berlin or Munich (even Lisbon, where I lived recently - where the local minimum wage is close to $3/hour!). Cheaper than the NYC or SF, but nowhere near the difference it was a few years ago. There are also many low cost of living places in the US where you'll pay a fraction of European housing costs but still get vastly more salary.
Most Europeans seem to have their head in the sand in this (I say this as one). They completely underestimate the salary differences between Europe and the US for middle class jobs, and vastly overestimate the benefits they get from the higher taxation. It is just not possible to say someone earning 3k EUR/month after tax is doing better fiscally than someone in the US earning $200k for the same job, paying 30-50% less tax.
I think it is actually rare for health care to be completely paid for out of pocket by the employer. Comparing with several peers in and out of tech (including one at FAANG), most companies only cover a portion of the health insurance premium cost per month. Retirement benefits also normally require you to contribute money from your paycheck. (For example, a company might contribute $0.5 per $1 you also contribute, up to a percentage of your salary)
Plus, there are usually still loads of out-of-pocket expenses even with insurance.
Point being: I think the math is more complex on this one.
*edited as I made an incorrect assumption just now.
There aren't even that many options for parents, many under 5 day care companies won't do 10 hour days. Lots of "2s programs" which means 3 hours 3 times a week where I am.
Healthcare in America is bad for the median but very good for the privileged.
$4500 * 12 = $54000. I don't have kids so I can't call on personal experience, but Spending the median household income after tax on childcare seems high.
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-27...
Europe remains fairly isolated from this effect because (a) not enough EU coders want to move to the US even at triple the salary to cause a shortage of coders there and (b) FAANG and US firms can get away with paying less in Europe because remote work is not yet quite equivalent to being on-prem in the US...
Why don't German developers move to SF or London? Some do, but then they're not software developers in Germany...
Why don't SF and London companies hire Germans to work remotely? Some are willing to - but they're also willing to hire Polish and Bulgarian developers, so the market rate isn't that great.
The work of a few engineers can support a workflow of a million users.
That spending $1 on engineering can bring in $10 of revenue.
And they probably want to deal only with engineers from the U.S. for legal reasons.
And up until recently, they’ve only hired in the Valley.
Finding qualified distributed system engineers with that funnel would definitely reduce the pool to several thousands.
Why wouldn't they be? US companies that drive up the salaries are extremely profitable and they compete for limited pool of engineers.
ionised then?