How much money you get for your job depends on many factors - your age, where you live and of course the industry you work in. See how you compare to others here.
The decision for a job is usually made for one of these reasons: either you are interested in the tasks or the job simply brings in money. Ideally, both come together.
The question of how much money a job makes depends not only on the activity itself, on how much brains it requires or how physically demanding it is. A shortage of skilled workers can make certain jobs more lucrative, while an oversupply can reduce salaries.
The wage slip also shows whether you have completed an apprenticeship or a degree. However, a university degree does not always bring more money per se than an apprenticeship.
You can test for yourself whether your own salary is way ahead, average or lags behind in comparison to others - with the help of a new interactive graphic from the employer-related Institute of German Economics (IW) in Cologne.
You can see this in the graph:
Median:The median is not to be confused with the average. While the mean sums all values and then divides them by the number of values, the median is used differently: you line up the values and then divide them at the point where there are exactly the same number of values larger and smaller. A central advantage of the median: It is robust against values that differ greatly from the others.A sample calculation: We have the numbers 1, 5, 8, 20, 30. The median of these numbers is 8, while the average is 12.8.
How to use the graphic:
Lack of skilled workers causes wages to rise in some occupations
According to a study by the IW, the wage level in occupations where there is a shortage of staff is significantly higher than in professions where there is no shortage of skilled workers. The wage advantage has increased from 7.9 to 9.3 percent since 2013.
However, a shortage of skilled workers does not always lead to higher salaries - it depends on how complex the jobs are. The higher the requirements, the more wages react to bottlenecks.
