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Comment by Bayart | Hacker News Reader

> You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe

You'd be well bellow the gross average everywhere in the EU, even the poorest countries. Outside of the EU you might have a shot in Albania or Moldova, but you'd lack all the infrastructure and stability you'd need for large scale manufacturing.

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Average is a really bad way of measuring what people get paid though. The average pay in Poland is currently 6700PLN/month , and that's a crazy amount of money for that country. Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN, just to show you the disparity between the average and "real" pay of real people. A factory worker will make much closer to 2000PLN a month than 6700PLN.

> Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN

Can you please provide some sources for that claim?

For example [1] says that the lowest, starting salary is already over 3000. And the salaries for teachers grow with work experience.

[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/10/12/polish-teachers-among...

>>Can you please provide some sources for that claim?

Family who are teachers - but I guess the bottom of the scale has increased now, that's my mistake.

Also observe how the top of the scale is 64578PLN/year, and according to the article, teachers reach that level in about 20 years on average. So even after working in the profession for 20 years, you don't reach the average wage for your country when working as a teacher.

The "average salary in Poland" you are mentioning is a very specific measurement based on companies that have 10 or more employees. This measures only a subset of workers: in particular, it does not measure the salaries of school teachers. The true average salary in Poland is lower than that.

I suspect that you do reach the average salary as an experienced teacher.

Your data is a bit dated - the minimum wage in Poland is 3010 PLN and it'll be 3490 PLN starting 1st Jan 2023.

The unemployment rate is very low, so to be able to hire factory employees you'd realistically need to offer at least 5000 PLN (~1000 USD) in gross salary.

You'd have a much better chance to open such factory in Spain or Portugal, the salaries are similar, but you'll have an easier time hiring + green energy from sun.

Minimum wage in 2022 is 3010PLN, so they can't make 2k unless you're talking about pay after taxes, but that 6.7k figure is before taxes, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.

A factory worker is living on minimum wage. Nowhere near average.

They don't seem to be minimum wage workers in China[1] and India[2]. And are in fact much closer to median than minimum.

Europe's minimum wages are much higher in comparison[3].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China

[2]https://www.india-briefing.com/news/guide-minimum-wage-india...

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

I don't understand your point. Google says Chinese manufacturing jobs pay $11k per year in 2020. This is a salary level of a south/east European factory worker.

That's the salary. Now, you have employers costs, which will be much higher in socialistic countries in EU.

not so much - US employees need very expensive employer-provided health insurance. In the EU that's covered by taxes instead. I couldn't find a direct comparison (hard because it varies by state & country), but it seems to be a wash:

https://topsourceworldwide.com/international-salaries/

note that China is 40% of salary as a payroll tax, which tops the list.

Quite the (wrong) assumptions, in service to a preconceived narrative.

What you term "socialistic" countries handle government services via taxes more than levies on employers.

It looks like the employer cost in China is 40.92%[0], while the highest percentage in Europe is 32.4% in Italy, and Switzerland imposes only 9.5%.

0. https://topsourceworldwide.com/international-salaries/

My point is that in general manufacturing jobs aren't minimum wage. And those levels are below minimum wage in most European countries.

I just checked job postings in Bulgaria(the poorest EU country) and $11k is just a bit above entry level salary for unskilled uneducated manufacturing workers. It's higher with taxes, experience, etc. and there's a lot of better options at that level.

And the truth is even if you can find cheap employees in Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Macedonia, infrastructure is not there and investment wouldn't make much sense because there's not a lot of people here that are okay with such low wages.

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