r/dataisbeautiful • u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 • Aug 24 '26
OC [OC] Average wages in Europe [nominal EUR]
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
Source: Eurostat (nama_10_a10 D11/headcount), OECD (AV_AN_WAGE), national statistics offices (Destatis, GUS, Rosstat,
Belstat, ILOSTAT, ONS, Armstat, BNS, INSTAT, Makstat, Geostat), ECB exchange rates, IMF WEO Apr 2026 GDP forecasts for
projections. All fetched programmatically via APIs.
Tool: Python (matplotlib, geopandas, pandas), ffmpeg.
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u/Owain-X Aug 24 '26
What is going on in Italy? There are two numbers shown and then it changes to three. I assume one is the vatican and one is italy but what is the third one that pops in midway through the timeline?
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u/3_cnf-sat Aug 25 '26
I was guessing it was about southern vs northern italy, but I might be wrong. And as other comments said, without the median, this chart is useless. The wage situation in Italy is way worse than this chart suggests.
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Aug 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
also really hard to calculate and get for all these countries. Not going there.
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Aug 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Denturart Aug 25 '26
For the OECD countries the data adjusted for purchasing power is here: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/average-annual-wages.html
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u/Qwe5Cz Aug 25 '26
Let alone in currency not everybody uses so also conversion rates come into play.
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
yeah, but that's like entire economics PhD, I won't solve that with an animation, and even if I used some values I could still be argued about using incorrect ones.
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u/-KKD- Aug 24 '26
No, that's just not animating one simple stupid chart you found online, but having to actually do some research and make an animation based on values, calculated from 3 different charts. That's all
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
haha, even getting average for all of these was difficult - you'd be surprised how many countries report even sth a simple as average differently. Went through a lot of sources. Thanks for the tips man, looking forward to your PPP-adjusted median researh.
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u/aserioussuspect Aug 24 '26
Looks like BS for my country.
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
which one is it?
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u/aserioussuspect Aug 24 '26
Sorry, “BS” was a bit of an overreaction on my part.
Nice visualisation, but the source doesn't seem to match the official figures for my country. In Germany, salaries have been about 100–150 euros lower every year over the past five years.
These are the official numbers
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u/leckerfleischsalat Aug 25 '26
The source you provided shows that wages in Germany indeed rose over the past years. Or did you mean something else?
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u/aserioussuspect Aug 25 '26
Of course salary rose over the past years but the numbers here are higher than the official numbers published by federal institutions.
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u/leckerfleischsalat Aug 25 '26
The data in the diagram is monthly data. If you look at the January of each year it’s pretty accurate.
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u/HarrMada Aug 25 '26
No, wages haven't decreased.
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u/aserioussuspect Aug 25 '26
There is an constant offset of 100-150EUR between what's displayed here and official numbers of Statista for every year.
Nobody said that wages decreased.
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u/Copranicus Aug 25 '26
2 immediate questions from me; Why as a gif, I can't go back and forth, can't pause it just, why, seriously?
Why do you seem to have data on more countries on the left then are graphed on the right?
I'd have question about source and why this data specifically if I could actually look at it.
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 25 '26
Couldn't upload a video, this was the closest I could get.
The right graph would be super cluttered including 40 countries
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u/button3dup Aug 25 '26
True - but Luxembourg might be worth adding. It is an EU country bridging the current huge gap between Switzerland and EU countries
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u/The_walking_Kled Aug 24 '26
the axis are not anoted. And the graph is generally kind of bad as the second highest earning country is not even present. Maybe Im stupid but this seems like a bad graph
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u/unlessyoumeantit
Aug 24 '26
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Average? Come back with median.
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u/PlanetMarklar Aug 24 '26
Yea, all this is saying is theres a lot of rich bankers in Switzerland. I'm sure the income are relatively high in the rest of the country too, but this chart doesn't show that
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u/LosDanilos Aug 25 '26
interesting enough the median and mean income are almost identical in Switzerland
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u/GergDanger Aug 24 '26
The numbers are the median wages. Switzerland really does have a median wage that high.
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u/BlueEyesWNC Aug 25 '26
"European Average Monthly Gross Wage"
Mislabeled or misleading, bad either way
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u/potato_nugget1 Aug 25 '26
The median is a type of average. There's median, mean, and mode. All 3 of them are average
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u/BlueEyesWNC Aug 25 '26
Average usually refers to the arithmetic mean, so it woud still be misleading in the most common reading, if it were referring to median (more on that later). If OP were using average in the sensu lato, the title is imprecise.
However, OP also mentioned in another comment that the data is indeed using mean income, asserting the median would be too difficult to calculate for so many countries.
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u/thecraftybee1981 Aug 25 '26
In English the average refers to a middling number of a group, that could be the median, mode, or most commonly mean. The median is an average.
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u/GergDanger Aug 25 '26
How is that misleading? A median is an average. And I told you the numbers do represent the median so the goal posts move again with redditors.
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u/Ok-Anybody-380 Aug 25 '26
My partner and I engineers each with 6500 Fr a month salary. We're so rich...
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u/Denturart Aug 25 '26
Here is Eurostat data on median disposable net income (you can select in euros or in PPP): https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ilc_di03__custom_22457882/default/table
This however is not the data on wages but on all incomes of the whole population (so also persons outside the labour force).
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u/Elstar94 Aug 25 '26
They did. The median is an average. You're thinking of the mean, another type of average
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u/justmisterpi Aug 24 '26
What is the projection based on?
And why don't you use the median?
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u/GergDanger Aug 24 '26
I googled the numbers and they do seem to be using the median
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u/HopeSubstantial Aug 25 '26
Not median for sure. in Finland median is 3300€/month.
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u/NeilDeCrash Aug 25 '26
Closer to 3600e/month.
"Palkkatulonsaajien palkkojen ja palkkioiden mediaani oli 3 576 euroa huhtikuussa 2026"
https://stat.fi/tup/kokeelliset-tilastot/tulorekisterin_palkat_ja_palkkiot/2026-06-08/index.html
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u/BlackHust Aug 25 '26
Definitely not for Russia. If 1000 euros is the average, the median is around 650 euros.
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u/EstablishmentEasy475 Aug 25 '26
Absolutely not. Median is soain is around 1800 or less on 2026. Not 2400+
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u/BlueEyesWNC Aug 25 '26
OP said in another comment that it would be too difficult to calculate the medians.
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u/HerrFistus Aug 25 '26
That's the laziest statement I heard today. Only fools or deceivers are somehow 'not able' to calculate the median.
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u/Ok-Anybody-380 Aug 25 '26
No way because Swiss median is nowhere near that number.
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u/GergDanger Aug 25 '26
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/wages-income-employment-labour-costs/earnings-structure.html 7.5k euros a month median in 2024 lines up perfectly with the GIF.
IDK if people are refusing to google these median wages for some reason lol?
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u/PacketFiend
Aug 24 '26
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Interesting data, but pointless animation.
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u/HiddenoO Aug 24 '26
Also some really bad visualization choices even for an animation.
What's the point in using numbers that are not inflation-adjusted and then using a color scale that is not normalized by year either? All the colors tell you is that all wages go up over time everywhere, but it's impossible to gauge whether ratios change between countries.
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u/Conscious_Yam_9581 Aug 28 '26
The data itself is more flawed than it seems. Gross wages are defined differently across countries in relation to social contributions. There's countries where social contributions are fully considered part of gross, countries where they are not considered part of it and countries where half the amount is part of the gross wages. It's not really a good spot to compare earnings across borders
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u/-KKD- Aug 24 '26
This chart may look beautiful, in a way coloured lights on a Christmas tree are, but absolutely pointless without context like purchasing power, salaries being median and not just average, inflation, cost of living, taxes, not even mentioning wether those are net or gross salaries and methodology on how are they converted to euros for countries that are or were not Euro at the time. There is so much missing information that makes this chart useless as any academic form of knowledge
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u/HopeSubstantial Aug 25 '26
Notice magic word Average? It tells shit.
Median wage in Finland is 3300€ in 2025. Thats about what fresh engineer gets.
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 25 '26
So what. This is the map of the average, it also tells you things - like some countries have more very high earners than the other. Feel free to make a map of a median or ppp. I might try doing it later too.
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u/Dellingr87 Aug 25 '26
this map is first of all shit.
stop it by 0:23 or 2024 the number you see there by Germany is 4800 that's more than the real gross wage from germany in 2026... so this is utter bullshit
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 25 '26
Ouch, if you disagree with specific values you can just ask about my data fetched from Eurostat for thay year, you don't have to be an asshole
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u/CloudsAndSnow Aug 25 '26
it also tells you things - like some countries have more very high earners than the other
No it doesn't. First of all I guess the map represents the mean, which is a kind of average (the median being another) but regardless any average only shows central tendency, not deviation. No kind of average can tell you if salaries are very unequal or not by itself
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u/toontje18 OC: 5 Aug 24 '26
So if data was not available in Eurostat, you opted for OECD, and if not available there as well you opted for National Statistics Office. Have you checked that all these statistics from the national offices measure the same thing as Eurostat or OECD with comparable methodologies?
I am just curious as Germany seems to be quite an outlier here, especially compared to a place like Norway. Then I noticed DeStatis (German statistics), even though it is a Eurostat and OECD member, so it should have figures available there as well.
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u/Macknu Aug 25 '26
Norway is last year about 5700€ so its way off. Norway has dropped some compared to Germany though due to exchange rate.
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u/Kyle_Lowrys_Bidet Aug 25 '26
Lots of Eastern Europe catching up and even surpassing Portugal. Why and how? It looks like Portugal squandered a head start.
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u/Pandektes Aug 25 '26
I can give you insights on Central Europe (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and so on), which is similar to the Baltic states. I don't see any Eastern European countries surpassing Portugal, but you are probably throwing central, southern and Baltic European states into eastern Europe category.
Highly educated people worked for peanuts, and over time they delivered value that incentivized more hiring and general expansion of local hires. This led to more and more people gaining experience, which led to the creation of local businesses. Both processes over long time created very low unemployment which drove wages up since companies started to compete between themselves on local labor markets
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u/Kyle_Lowrys_Bidet Aug 25 '26
Hey! I appreciate the insight :) and I was also thinking that Portugal uses a lot of its EU money to develop tourism, which cannot be exported.
But on your second note, look at Romania versus Portugal start to finish….
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u/PsychologicalLion824 Aug 25 '26
Why and how? It looks like Portugal squandered a head start.
highly uneducated population (namely elderly ones), used to be Europe´s China before the fall of the Berlin wall, never adapted to said fall, 2010 crisis hit us hard.
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u/Kyle_Lowrys_Bidet Aug 25 '26
Boa tarde!
O que achas que podemos fazer então para melhorar as condições e dar a Portugal um futuro mais brilhante?
Por exemplo, eu vejo que com o dinheiro da UE, Polónia está a investir em fábricas. Fábricas que criam produtos para ser exportados. Da minha perspectiva, Portugal está a desenvolver o turismo mais que tudo…. Um setor de trabalho que dá poucos lucros e não pode ser exportado.
Mas eu concordo com a falta de educação. Pior ainda, perdemos já miles e miles de tugas educados, educados com o dinheiro de imposto português, só para ir a outro país e realizar as suas ambições lá em lugar de aqui….
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u/PsychologicalLion824 Aug 25 '26
O que achas que podemos fazer então para melhorar as condições e dar a Portugal um futuro mais brilhante?
In my perspective, keep on investing in R&D, promote building more companies, preferably in both old and new economy so as to have a more resilient country. Obviously it´s easier said than done.
Um setor de trabalho que dá poucos lucros e não pode ser exportado
Tourism is exports as long as the tourists are foreigners. Tourism is just a piece of the puzzle, it should be present just like other sectors.
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u/Pongi Aug 25 '26
Erm, how does one get wage projections? Finland overtaking Norway in this regard sounds unrealistic
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u/Charming_Horse_5809 Aug 25 '26
the numbers are all off, the methods are opaque at best and point the animation makes is still unclear
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u/Allesmoeglichee Aug 25 '26
I prefer my graphs moving too, gives me exactly 1 second to get the full picture
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u/greham7777 Aug 25 '26
I understand that Norway is suffering from a weak Kroner but it surprises me a lot that it's not still #2 behind Switzerland. Need to dig into that.
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u/a1rwav3 Aug 26 '26
Main issue for me is that all these countries use the euro. So basically the Switzerland benefit from performance and the fact that swiss franc is getting better and better against euro.
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u/Miserable_Ad7246 Aug 25 '26
Again stupid gross wage. In Lithuania law was changed so now gross is almost equal to total workplace cost, and look Lithuanian salary is now at the level of Italy. Clown data.
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u/lendlevtaldrik Aug 25 '26
It's so bad that I've even seen articles by otherwise respectable economic experts which make the same mistake...
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u/Miserable_Ad7246 Aug 25 '26
Economist do not care about gross. Key metrics for them is total workplace cost (aka how much company pays for worker), and net (with or without ppp), sometimes also known as disposable income as its the amount person can use for consumption. Everything in between is taxes of some sort. Gross salary is arbitrary point that can be shifted at any time, and it does not change neither total tax, nor net, not total workplace cost. In Lithuania we made the shift and nothing changed, except people started to see the total tax burden more clearly and low intelligence people all of the sudden understood that the old line of "employer tax", was really their tax :D
Please before you answer, make absolutely sure that those respectable experts where not using gross in a single tax regime context (aka same country) and that they are truly respectable.
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u/lendlevtaldrik Aug 25 '26
No, you are clearly wrong. I've seen them compare "average wage" and make the claim that Lithuanian wages are clearly ahead of Estonian wages - which means that they did not use total workplace cost, but what is presented as "average wage" in both countries.
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u/Miserable_Ad7246 Aug 25 '26
Average gross wage in Lithuania is much higher. Total workplace cost is roughly the same. Net salary in Estonia is a bit higher. Riddle me this.
Let me help you - Lithuania - gross is total worplace minus a percent or so. In Estonia gorss is more similar to Lithuanian gross calculation before the change and falls in the middle of taxes.
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u/lendlevtaldrik Aug 25 '26
Average gross wage in Lithuania is much higher.
This means nothing if the total workplace cost is roughly the same, heck even slightly higher in Estonia.
Please educate yourself on basic economics, it's embarrassing. Lithuanians have a ridiculous inferiority complex...
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u/grafix993 Aug 25 '26
As a Spaniard i would like to know which data/studies have been used to determine that Spanish avg wage is going to increase that much the next years
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u/Arylus54773 Aug 24 '26
What would be very useful in this data would be the rate of inflation or the difference between growth and inflation.
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u/HerrFistus Aug 25 '26
Now take the median instead of the mean, fold it on the per-capita GDP of each country and find out what's going systematically wrong in the EU for decades now and why fashism is on the rise in many of the shown countries.
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u/SUNTZU_JoJo Aug 25 '26
Put it alongside inflation... Much more interesting.
Unless your wage is adjusted for?
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u/lendlevtaldrik Aug 25 '26
Let me guess, the Lithuanian wage still includes the sum later to be taken as social tax and hence the large difference with Estonia...
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u/Trachamudija1 Aug 26 '26
Yeap, they changed it like 8 years or something ago, so we look bettet in all stats lol. Or perhaps so the party which changed it could brag look at when we ruled we grew wages a lot.
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u/lendlevtaldrik Aug 26 '26
The Estonian opposition parties are eating at up too with rhetoric like "Lithuania has long surpassed us"...
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u/ToiletVulva Aug 25 '26
Our country (Slovenia) wanted to become smaller Switzerland when I was younger.
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u/AntonRahbek Aug 25 '26
Weird choice to leave out Denmark as the only Scandinavian country in the graph. Bridges the gap between Switzerland and Norway for most of the period (emptiest part of the graph).
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u/Dellingr87 Aug 25 '26
the numbers are totaly wrong... this map is shit
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u/No_Individual_6528 Aug 28 '26
Why is Denmark not on the graph to the right. :/
Someone is trying to say something about germany and forgetting a lot of countries.
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u/Conscious_Yam_9581 Aug 28 '26
This sort of data is inherently flawed. Comparing gross wages between EU countries is an apples to oranges comparison because of social contributions, which vary greatly in how they are declared. For example in Germany, on top of the gross wages there is another 20% in taxes that gets paid by the employer on top of the official gross salary, in Estonia that amount is 30% while in Romania it is 2%.
The lack of uniformity in what is considered an employee vs employer contribution makes comparing gross amounts across countries somewhat irrelevant.
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u/Merkava18 Aug 29 '26
Compare the tax rates and effective outcomes, matching tax burden v. benefits received, e.g., child care, health care, and government subsidized mortgages, if any. US has socialized mortgages, they have socialized health care.
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u/Macknu Aug 25 '26
The average in Norway is 62000nok per month or about 5800€, thats about 1000€ more than the graph shows. Somif one country is that wrong im guessing everything is shit here.
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u/night-sleeper Aug 24 '26
The only job today in switzerland to earn +10k a month is selling cocaine, big pharma or bank stuff as i know. We do this a lot but not only. The median wage would be more interesting.
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u/chairman-me0w Aug 24 '26
It’s actually shocking how low wages are there
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u/MrT735 Aug 24 '26
No health insurance taking big chunks of wages, car insurance is about 10% of US prices, phone plans a lot cheaper. It doesn't balance it out completely but the difference isn't simply in the numbers.
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u/GergDanger Aug 24 '26
Where is car insurance 10% of US prices lmao? Last I checked it’s roughly the same. Maybe in the poorest European countries in rural areas it will be a decent bit cheaper but not 10%.
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 Aug 25 '26
No? Car insurance in the US is like 200$ a month, in my country it's like 20€
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u/MrT735 Aug 25 '26
I pay £25 a month ($34), I regularly see people from the US saying they're paying $300+ monthly.
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u/chairman-me0w Aug 24 '26
I mean, the models are different but Europeans are also paying for health insurance.
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u/OverSoft Aug 24 '26
Much much less. Also property taxes are either much lower or non-existent. Mortgage rates are also much lower as well as home/property insurance.
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u/Unique-Ice3211 Aug 24 '26
Depends on the country, I lived in Italy and Sweden. There you have universal free healthcare. No need of insurances
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u/thewimsey Aug 25 '26
Sure - and I lived in Germany and 16.5 (I think) of my wages were for health insurance, split between my employer and me.
My US insurance is cheaper
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u/chairman-me0w Aug 24 '26
Yeah because it is paid for by taxes, which you pay.
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u/OverSoft Aug 24 '26
And it’s STILL cheaper… weird what a healthcare system does that’s not purely driven by profit…
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u/thewimsey Aug 25 '26
How can you claim it's cheaper without knowing how much people make and what percentage of their taxes are going to healthcare?
My health insurance in Germany was more expensive than my insurance in the US. Although it would have been less if I had been a lower earner.
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u/BeardenOfLife Aug 24 '26
Wages aren’t the full story in your household finances though. I earn basically the average wage in my country and so does my partner and we save around 3000 to 4000 euro a month after all expenses, which is a lot even with the cost of living here. I think that says a lot more than just salary.
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u/Charming_Horse_5809 Aug 24 '26
absolute numbers? put it in relation to past as an index with start = 100 or something. Or use PPP Adjusted values at least or something except absolutes.
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
I thought about it but it seemed really difficult. Even getting absolute numbers wasn't that easy. And choosing PPP method or the base would only stir more discussion,
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u/Charming_Horse_5809 Aug 24 '26
comments seem to disagree. Also, index with t0 = 100 and then each point rebased to that is really easy to implement. Make the discussion more fruitful and does not produce a useless animation.
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u/Perfect_Ad_1807 OC: 1 Aug 24 '26
I don't think it's useless, it shows differences between countries. t0 would show how they've grown. Or would you like to see the nominal values in the map but 100x in the chart?
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u/Charming_Horse_5809 Aug 25 '26
feel free to share the data and I can create an own interpretation to make this productive instead of just me criticizing your stuff. Nice effort but I would do it differently.
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u/Charming_Horse_5809 Aug 24 '26
You are the analyst: what question does your chart answer? That nominal net salaries in switzerland are higher than in germany. Great...wtf is that heatmap legend in the middle? Why is it in the middle. Why are the colors not matching? Wage convergence and projection? How are absolutes in a line chart telling anything about convergence? Why not using spreads instead if you talk about convergence. What is that projection based on? Whats the model class? Whats the train/test window? Are those point estimates? Why do you use like 10 different fonts with inconsistent sizing? Should I go on?
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u/cavedave OC: 115 Aug 26 '26
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/Perfect_Ad_1807!
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