That is outrageous that two seemingly developed countries could have such a huge compensation gap. A senior aerospace engineer in the UK can make as little as 45k GBP, or 56k USD? One fifth as much as the lowest-paid American??
The take-home on that is £35k. The median rent in London is £26k. I suppose the person making £45k doesn't likely live in London, but still pretty grim.
Americans are often blown away and kind of ignorant of how, relative to the rest of the world, they are really wealthy and well paid. Like, people have way less disposable incomes in other parts of the world, even developed countries. The purchase power of the USD and the power of the US economy is absolutely insane.
Yes, Aerospace Engineers don't live in London because there are very little (if any) aerospace jobs in London. Biggest aerospace employers in the UK are BAE Systems and Airbus, and both have factories in much cheaper locations (Wales, Northwest of England).
You're basically comparing "super specialised job in the middle of nowhere with very low cost of living" vs a "super specialised but much more needed job in multiple high cost of living locations" (Seattle metro area, LA metro area to name a few).
The UK is poor because they decided to financialize the economy in the 90s and stop making things. It's like canada where the GDP per capita goes down every year. I'm amazed there hasn't been a revolution.
Sure, but expanding the definition of “Canadian” to include people who were already poor is a bit different from people who were already Canadian becoming poorer.
I don't think the average migrant salary is much different from the average UK citizen salary. Then again, I also don't find the "financialisation" argument very compelling. Plus, the GDP per capita visibly does not go down every year.
According to Stats Canada, “Real GDP per capita has now declined in five of the past six quarters”, so fair to say it’s currently declining. This was news to me.
"another respected data journalist, John Burn-Murdoch, calculated that without London, the UK would be poorer, in terms of GDP per capita, than even the poorest US state, Mississippi."
Yes, it's true that the UK economy is very London-centric, but the original poster was talking about the UK as a whole vs the US as a whole. (The flip side of this is that the figures would look better if you compared London to a major US city.)
None of this changes the fact that US software engineering salaries are a poor comparison to use to illustrate wealth disparities between the US and other countries, as they are an outlier.
Regardless, Americans are not five times richer than Brits by any reasonable measure. The salaries in the comparison upthread are outliers. The exact figure obviously depends on which stat you look at, but Americans are around 50% richer by most measures.
The U.S. engineer can be fired on a whim immediately and lose their health care (COBRA) and the company that fires them can even contest their unemployment benefits (that the employee paid into) if they feel motivated enough. That's one of the reasons they get paid much more.
I’ve been fired before by a major American tech company. I was underperforming, unmotivated, and depressed about it. They gave me a substantial severance payment in exchange for quitting voluntarily, and for signing an agreement that basically said I wouldn’t sue them. They let me pick my last date, they paid my health insurance through the next three months, and my manager told me I could use my last month of employment to find a new job. I was quickly hired into a better-paid position at another company, with a better manager, and I did well there.
I realize this story sounds absurd to anyone who hasn’t experienced it, but my understanding is that this form of firing (“managing out”) is basically the norm for low performers at top-tier tech companies.
To get actually fired, you usually have to fuck up big time, like sexually harassing a coworker, stealing trade secrets, or trying to start a union. (That last one is a joke, sort of)
Quite! A top 10% earner in Finland, a supposedly very developed country, by saving all of their net-income spending zero on food and letting their SO pay the bills, could in 2-3 years afford a new Skoda.
I don’t know if you’re making a joke or not, but getting NHS isn’t worth $200,000 USD per year.
Most Americans get employer-provided health insurance, which costs money (the amount specified in the DD section of the W2), and its often in the $1500/month range. That DD amount isn’t part of your income or the salary Glassdoor mentions. It’s an added benefit of top of that.
In the UK and elsewhere, around $500/month/person in taxes pays for your healthcare. That’s essentially subtracted from your income. So the uk income is even lower when you subtract the taxes the NHS costs.
> I don’t know if you’re making a joke or not, but getting NHS isn’t worth $200,000 USD per year.
Nope, but NHS + no/less student loans + no car dependency + cheaper childcare + time off + a ton of other things shave quite a bit off that $200k. Not equal, and not in every personal case, but a lot.
Isn’t housing extremely unaffordable in the UK though? That erases a lot of these benefits, doesn’t it? (I’m aware this is true of a lot of HCOL areas in the U.S. as well.)
Canadian and not UKian, but our public healthcare is definitely not worth 50% of my take home cash, I get much better access to care in the US right now. it still says Canada on my passport so I can get healthcare if I get fired or chronically ill
The take-home on that is £35k. The median rent in London is £26k. I suppose the person making £45k doesn't likely live in London, but still pretty grim.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024/10/14/the-amer...