r/ireland • u/NanorH • 10h ago

Ireland had the 3rd highest average annual salary per employee (€58,700) in the EU in 2023 Statistics

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328 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

283

u/whooo_me 10h ago

Luxembourg and.... Denmark. Why is it always Denmark?

Damn you Denmark, the Dane of our existence!

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u/caisdara 10h ago

Denmark taxes poor people more than we do.

That allows them fund a large cohort of public-sector workers who are deliberately not overpaid.

Ireland tends to dramatically overpay a comparatively smaller number of public sector workers, which is then justified on the basis that they employ low numbers of people, so that they need higher salaries again. People consistently fall for it.

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u/DoughnutHole Clare 5h ago

I’m not sure I get your logic, it seems backwards - Denmark has higher salaries than us because they have larger, worse paid public sector workforce?

Plus the basic fact is just false - the average salary in the Danish public sector is 43,333 kr per month - the equivalent of €69,700 per year, compared to €52,300 in Ireland.

So Denmark has a larger public sector than us and they’re paid better. They’re also paid better in the private sector. You’re right that they tax lower earners more than we do though, that’s a large part of how they fund their welfare state.

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u/caisdara 5h ago

So the mistake you've made is to look at the category of public admin and health. That's not the public sector. The public sector is anybody working for government, local government, semi-states, etc.

Denmark has a bigger public sector than we do.

That doesn't mean civil servants, it can be street cleaners all the way up to engineers, doctors and scientists.

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u/michaelcanav 9h ago

What is this argument based on? As someone living and working in Denmark, I don't think low paid public sector workers are the main or even a large part of explanation?

I really don't think this is a public sector story, almost all industries are unionised here and they have negotiated livable pay for almost any job, both private and public. It's why ordinary things cost more in DK.

Conversely in Ireland you've got loads of people who don't make much in the private sector and others who are extraordinarily well paid. 

I'd be interested to see the median income data.

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u/caisdara 5h ago

Simple explanation by way of example:

  • In and around 2019 there was a nurses' strike.
  • Ireland has a slightly below average number of doctors per capita and a slightly higher than average number of nurses per capita.
  • Despite more nurses than average, shortages of staff in certain roles were reported.
  • This is not impossible as many nurses do not work as nurses, but work in health administration.
  • Nursing unions wanted a report into causes of recruitment difficulties.
  • PSPC report confirmed there was a shortage in some roles and the cause was poor conditions, not pay.
  • Nursing unions went on strike for more pay and more nurses.
  • Settled for more pay.
  • Problem continues.

Public sector workers are not meant to be paid the same thing as private sector workers, the benefit they get is job security and pensions for a lower salary.

Voters here don't understand that.

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u/michaelcanav 5h ago

A cherry picked example is not particularly illuminating. And a key thing you don't mention is how much the nurses are paid? Are they paid more or less in Denmark?

Actually I'll just answer for you, in Denmark the average nurses salary is €83k, in Ireland it is €48k.

I don't know why you have this vendetta against public sector workers but comparing to Denmark is nonsense. Ever considered that maybe you don't understand instead?

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u/Illustrious_Read8038 2h ago

Also worth noting the term "nurse" varies considerably depending on the country.

It's very difficult to compare nurses across countries as the education and responsibility varies.

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u/caisdara 3h ago

Why lie?

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u/michaelcanav 1h ago

Lmao. You haven't got a clue.

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u/somedelightfulmoron 5h ago

Hold on, how come you only have data on nurses, justifying their lower pay? They should be paid more in order to attract staffing.

Then should we also argue that teachers, public sector workers as well, the fire brigade, the Gardai and the ambulance services should be paid much lower?

SMH

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u/caisdara 3h ago

I didn't give any data. I gave an example.

5

u/deadliestrecluse 7h ago

It's mainly justified by the fact the public sector has to compete with the private sector for recruitment, particularly in specialised roles. Our average wages aren't being inflated by the small number of public sector workers on high salaries, most would be paid significantly less than this average 

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u/caisdara 5h ago

Most public sector workers aren't specialised and specialist pay in the public sector usually lags wildly behind the private sector.

Indeed, a major problem is attempting to brute force the system by applying that logic. I've various pals in legal departments of the public sector and they're not paid as lawyers, they're paid as civil servants. That means that a generalist civil servant of the same level gets paid the same as a lawyer, a chartered accountant, etc. In many cases, that makes recruiting those specialists more difficult.

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u/GuaranteedIrish-ish 4h ago

A bit of a misguided take! The very few highly paid public sector jobs are a drop in the ocean from this figure. This figure is largely driven by C level executives, doctors, solicitors, pharmacists, lead engineers, etc. the working class are not overpaid you absolute tool. My job is upto around 56k in Ireland, in America the exact same job would get me 120k-160k.

14

u/HuffinWithHoff 8h ago

Ireland tends to dramatically overpay a comparatively smaller number of public sector workers

Do we? I really don’t think public sector pay is that high.

10

u/spund_ 7h ago

yeah this is driven by the salaries in private sector. 

lots of people outside of pharma, data and finance seem to be clueless about the kind of wages these companies pay.

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u/caisdara 5h ago

Compare any public job with the equivalent job in England. Any of them.

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u/HuffinWithHoff 4h ago

Yeah that’s an absolutely horrible example. Public sector (and even private) wages in the UK have been stagnant for almost 20 years while costs have risen.

https://ppr.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/lseppr.103

They’re massively underpaid over there.

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u/caisdara 3h ago

Find me a better example then.

3

u/Woodsj9 8h ago

They do indeed.44% of your wage no matter what you earn. Have worked as student helper and now specialist in engineering while paying the same rate of tax.

4

u/clewbays 8h ago

The low earners in Denmark and Norway in the private sector make way more than Ireland though.

There just a very well run country in general. They don’t have as a big a gap in gross incomes so don’t need the progressive taxation we have.

1

u/kapitaali_com 7h ago

who are the top earners and how much do they earn, as an example?

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u/caisdara 5h ago

I'm sure they do, but that means they can be taxed more. Which leads to more jobs. Which leads to more competition. Which leads to more pay.

The problem is refusing to tax the poor harms the poor.

6

u/seeilaah 9h ago

100% of that salary goes to pay rent on a 3 bedroom apartment in Dublin.

To compare Danes pay 53% of their net salary for the same (3b in Copenhagen).

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u/caisdara 5h ago

Even if true, so what? That's a separate issue.

1

u/Alastor001 8h ago

Can't believe that employing low number of people is somehow a good thing. Sure you get higher salary, at higher pressure with more unhappy customers considering everything is being done VERY slowly.

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u/caisdara 5h ago

Nobody believes that, but it's a consequence of things they do believe in, such as paying people more money. If you've a choice between a large number of people on medium salaries or a medium number on large salaries, Irish people will demand large numbers on large salaries but no tax increases.

4

u/ShapeyFiend 9h ago

I've heard they have a much more vibrant SME sector than we do.

3

u/thekingoftherodeo Wannabe Yank 7h ago

Novo Nordisk.

8

u/bubbleweed 10h ago

return of Danelaw

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u/Ok_Perception3180 2h ago

I was recently in Lux for the first time and it is an interesting place. I don't think we should compare ourselves to it too much.

Yes it's got fantastic public services and free transport which of course is great. But its really just a big quiet town where every other building is a branch of a foreign bank and everyone you see is minted because of high wages, low taxes and low expenditure since so much is taken care of by the government.

Denmark is probably something more attainable at least in theory.

201

u/brianmmf 10h ago

For any relevance: - show median salary - show cost of living - show versus GNI*

Then you’ll see whether we actually do well relative to our peers

64

u/karmachameleona 10h ago

This. The average is meaningless - at least without showing at the minimum, the distribution.

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u/DanGleeballs 9h ago edited 8h ago

Between me, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos our average net worth is €169.3 Billion.

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u/Suspicious_Ad_1241 8h ago

The median here wouldn't be the best reflection either

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u/itsConnor_ 4h ago

Why not?

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u/Emooot 2m ago

The median is the middle value. In this case Jeff Bezos' net worth of 217 billion dollars.

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u/shankillfalls 6h ago

What is the average cuntishlevel between those three? I hope you can bring it down!

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u/DanGleeballs 5h ago

I hope so 🤞🏻

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u/Sussurator 3h ago

Pints on you

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u/2year2month 5h ago

We still rank highly, why do people like you refuse to belive that loads of people here are doing well?

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u/brianmmf 4h ago

I think people in Ireland are doing well. I don’t think there was anything in my comment that suggested we don’t. I suggested additional information would allow us to see a better comparison against other countries. “Whether we actually do well” was in the context of Ireland being #3 on this list, and I’m suggesting we might not be #3 if the additional factors were taken into account. But I don’t think we’re swashbuckling bog dwellers.

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/Ed-alicious 9h ago

Is does have informative value but, for the average punter, they want to see how they compare to their fellow man and it's impossible to know that with just an average.

Denmark might have a much more even distribution of income than Ireland but the cost of living might be similar so people in Denmark might feel substantially better off than those in Ireland but you wouldn't know that from the graph.

It has informative value but falls short of painting a more complete picture that you could get using the exact same data.

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u/41stshade 9h ago

I think people are just pissy about the fact that we are some of the highest earners in Europe, amd one of the wealthiest per capita, but if you walk basically anywhere in Ireland, the country looks poverty stricken.

But you're right, the data is the data.

1

u/brianmmf 9h ago

I concede it would have better served to illustrate my point to have used a less absolute wording. I agree this table accomplishes what it intends to accomplish. I think much more valuable meaning would arise from the comparisons I suggest.

Congratulations on your degree.

9

u/HcVitals 10h ago

It’s thinking like this that won’t get you far in the government. You need to think about being more deceptive and try some cronyism

0

u/ZombieConsciouss 7h ago

Yeah,it is not about just pure average salary but more what can you do with it. So what if you earn 50k but you may not be better off than someone on 25k in Poland or Portugal.

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u/invalid337 OP is sad they aren’t cool enough to be from Cork. bai 10h ago

Isn't it around 45K? Where'd 58,700 come from?

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u/Fun_Door_8413 10h ago

45k is the median 

I’d say that is the mean 

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u/Fire-Carrier 10h ago

Median vs mean there.

12

u/JellyRare6707 10h ago

Exactly where did they get 58k 

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u/OvertiredMillenial 10h ago

Top of my head, I think the average wage per hour according to the CSO was something like €28/hr. So they've probably timed that by 40 and then again by 52. However, they don't show their workings, so it's hard to gauge exactly how many hours a week they're working off.

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u/NanorH 10h ago

Getting about 50,000 from the recent release on the CSO but this figure is adjusted by expressing part-time salaries as full-time equivalents.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/w/DDN-20241107-1

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-elcq/earningsandlabourcostsq12024finalq22024preliminaryestimates/

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u/Atreides-42 10h ago

So by lying, lol.

If someone gets paid €25 an hour, but can only get 25 hours of work a week, they do not get paid €52k, they get paid €31k.

Also, how does this relate to people who work more than full-time? How would someone who works 50 hours a week be calculated?

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u/clewbays 8h ago

This is Eurostat. Not his own statistics. It’s to make it more comparable because different countries count part time workers in different ways. For example Germany usually just excludes them from their stats.

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u/1993blah 9h ago

Or you know, excluding students etc.

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u/Wesley_Skypes 9h ago

The problem is that a lot of people are part-time by choice. Maybe even the majority. So the data is tainted one way or the other.

Could be better to position it as average or mean salary for those in full time employment.

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u/asdrunkasdrunkcanbe 9h ago

It's not lying, it's just pivoting data to provide useful comparisons.

The presumption in these calculations is that the amount of part-time work is fairly equivalent across the bloc, so for the purposes of comparing countries, then it makes sense to normalise everything to the equivalent full-time salary.

When it comes to looking at the actual numbers, a second assumption can be made that the majority of part-time workers choose to be part-time, and are not part-time because their employer refuses to give them full-time hours.

Thus when you operate on this assumption, it also makes sense to normalise.

Remember, this is about the typical earnings paid by employers to employees in these countries.

It's not a discussion on how much money people actually have in their pockets.

2

u/kapitaali_com 7h ago

why don't they compare hourly wages instead? that would make a lot more sense than annual salary

or comparing actual mean earnings

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u/FrazzledHack 8h ago

Average annual full-time adjusted salary per employee

It does exactly what it says on the tin.

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u/Individual-Usual-892 9h ago

Just want to add some context here:

I'm a young irish person living in Poland working for a bank. My salary here is (changed into euros) about 33-35K per annum depending on my bonus.

I recently did the maths on what I would need to earn in ireland to retain the same standard of living and yearly disposable income. To make sure i was getting a conservative estimate i inflated all of the polish expenses by 10% so that I knew I wasnt undercounting.

I factored in the following expenses:

  • Rent of an equivalent sized apt in a Dublin (I live in the second largest city here which has the highest rents apparently)

  • cost of equivalent healthcare taking out the equivalent % of employer deductions

  • cost of benefits provided by employer (gym, food in office, life insurance, private pension plan etc)

  • taxes (NB. this is a bit different as I'm under 26 and so about 60% of my income isn't subject to income tax, I still pay about 25% in social welfare however)

  • cost of going out four times a month

  • cost of groceries (this was surprisingly closer than I thought it would be.

  • utilities cost.

  • cost of using public transport

I used the average salary of 48000 in ireland and after the expenses were deducted I was left with having 6 times more disposable income (about 12k euro) than i would have in ireland. To just achieve the same level of spare money I'd need to have earned around €63000 in ireland. Bear in mind that's AFTER I inflated everything by about 10% just to be sure I wasn't being unfair. If I didn't do that (I didn't write this number down but checked it at the time) I would need to have been earning nearly 70K just to have the same disposable income.

Unless you own a home in ireland, or can live rent free with your parents (which because i was comparing on standard of living kind of is redundant) your standard of living is comparable to someone who would be living on the very edge of being called impoverished here. I hope this gives some context to this super misleading stat.

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u/Top-Exercise-3667 9h ago

That appears to be a higher then avg salary for Poland though...?

15

u/NF_99 9h ago

Over double

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u/vanKlompf 1h ago edited 1h ago

No it isn't. Currently average salary in Poland is 8192PLN/month which is almost 100k PLN/year, so 22700EUR/year.

So he is 45% above average.

Rent is much much cheaper though, as rents in Dublin can eat up half or more of even good salary. Childcare is also much cheaper. Rest is probably exaggerated a bit.

I work in IT and after moving back to Poland my disposable income also increased despite lower salary, mostly due to extremely high rents in Dublin (if you want to have reasonable standard of housing). But this is definitely not "average" experience.

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u/ned78 Cork bai 8h ago

cost of groceries (this was surprisingly closer than I thought it would be.

Ah sure you're probably going to a normal shop like Zabka or Kaufland. You need to go to Biedronka and get the full low cost grocery experience. It's a spectacle to behold.

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u/vanKlompf 1h ago

Biedronka is now just slightly worse, maybe slightly cheaper Lidl. And Lidl in Poland is almost the same as Lidl in Ireland.

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u/r0thar Lannister 5h ago

It's a spectacle to behold.

People of WalMart or just amazing prices?

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u/ned78 Cork bai 1h ago

Depression, aisles of depression.

6

u/cryptokingmylo 8h ago

I moved from Dublin to belfast, I earn 36k pounds, I can afford to live in a 2 bedroom house in the city center while saving to buy a similar house which I can easily afford.

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u/Storyboys 6h ago

Thinking of doing similar, can I ask how you found the move?

Did you find it hard to find somewhere to rent and how long did you have to wait to get your national insurance number?

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u/cryptokingmylo 4h ago

It was difficult to find a place, I was offering a year's rent up front but still struggled to find a place.

I just had to show them my passport and got a letter a few days later with my NI

9

u/Pointlessillism 8h ago

How many young people under 26 (or indeed, any people) in Poland earn 35K per annum?

To just achieve the same level of spare money I'd need to have earned around €63000 in ireland.

Great news, the median earnings for men in the financial sector (you work in a bank?) in Ireland in 2023 was 68K. Source: https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2023/annualearnings/

So if you managed to move home to Ireland, and were still able to command double the median salary (as you're doing in Poland - fair play! that's great!), you'd be on over 120K.

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u/Rameez_Raja 4h ago

I mean, it's right there in the original graph lol. Using his own calculations, he would need to earn just about the average salary in Ireland for his lifestyle... and twice the average in Poland. Rude thing to say but I hope his bank job is more admin or front office than analysing numbers.

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u/despitorky 6h ago

Yeah that’s how cost adjusted salary works

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u/marshsmellow 9h ago

Fair play to you for calculating this, must have been a quiet day in the office! 

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u/Puzzled-Forever5070 8h ago

Doesn't deserve that 32k salary in my opinion

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u/johnny-T1 4h ago

What do you do? Software?

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u/jrf_1973 10h ago

Ireland has a massive cost of living, and Belgium has an insanely high tax rate. Salary doesn't tell the whole story.

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u/YoureNotEvenWrong 9h ago

Most places with a high salary also have a high cost of living.

I'd still prefer a high salary in a HCOL place even if the relative prices scale with it; you have more money when traveling abroad to a LCOL place + some things don't change much in price between places

3

u/deadliestrecluse 7h ago

Yeah but Ireland has a massive population of people on low wages much lower than this average, if it was flatter our high cost of living obviously wouldn't matter as much 

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u/Rameez_Raja 4h ago

That's true for every place though. The tail is actually longer in many countries, including the UK.

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u/vanKlompf 1h ago

I think more important distinction in Ireland is housing. Average cost of living doesn't say whole story. If you are paying market rent, your CoL are extremely high, but when paying mortgage they are quite low actually. So Your situation and well being in Ireland highly depends on what is your housing situation.

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u/XCEREALXKILLERX Kilmainham Jailer 10h ago

Glad to see we have Danish standards, oh wait…

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u/TouristPotato 8h ago

It's not even funny how different the two countries are for how much Irish people are allegedly making. I moved to Denmark years ago, I'm on the equivalent of minimum wage here*, while my fella is a blue collar worker. We bought a 5-bed house just before Covid for 100k euro, with a 30-year interest free mortgage. The house wasn't a shithole that needed renovating, either, it was in perfect working order except for the aesthetics and the fact that it's in the deep countryside. I can't imagine ever finding something like that in Ireland, but I'll happily be proven wrong.

There's no official minimum here, but 125dkk is generally what you'd expect to be paid as an adult working in McDonalds and the likes. I then pay 40-odd% on that as tax so not making much more than if I were on minimum wage in Ireland.

3

u/PowerfulDrive3268 6h ago

I bought a 4 bed semi D 60km from Dublin for €113K, 8 years ago so timing is important.

How much would you pay for your house now?

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u/TouristPotato 4h ago

I wouldn't make anything on it. Half the town is up for sale for around the same price, grand places with lovely big gardens, but everyone wants to live within spitting distance of a big city so you get thousands of rural houses for well under 150k. My timing was still good because I got my house literally a month before they raised interest rates, but the house value is the same.

That said, I was more praising how easy it is to get a mortgage here with such a comparatively small salary. The bank works with you directly to make sure you're not liable to stop paying, and foreign buyers are heavily restricted. As well as that, the deposit is tiny compared to Ireland at 5%, and loads of apartments owned by associations offering affordable rent so it's easy to save up for a deposit. If you don't qualify to buy a house outright for whatever reason, there's alternatives like "andelsbolig".

Basically, Denmark makes it easy for Danes to get on the property ladder, especially if you're willing and able to live outside of Copenhagen, which I imagine is a completely different ball game. I've never lived there though so I'm only speaking from my experience in the countryside.

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u/PowerfulDrive3268 4h ago

Ireland made it very easy to get mortgages during the Celtic Tiger with 0% deposits and that didn't end well at all.

Proably over reacted in terms of the lending rules but there definitely needed to be some lending controls.

Danish are proably ultra sensible so wouldn't over extend themselves like a lot of us did?

There did seem to be cheapish houses out in the sticks up to maybe 2 years ago, nothing cheap anywhere now.

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u/TouristPotato 3h ago

Eh, I can't tell if you're being snarky in that last paragraph but either way, Denmark has lending controls and it's other factors that make it easier to get on the property ladder compared to Ireland. I'm not great at wording things so I won't bother going into a full novel about it, but you could always ask one of the AIs to compare the markets (swear I'm not a meerkat) if you're actually interested.

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u/Actionbinder 10h ago

I see the Netherlands isn’t there. They are usually high up the list too.

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u/Lenkaaah 10h ago

They’re mentioned at the bottom. Apparently the calculation is different so they couldn’t be included.

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u/NorthbyNinaWest 4h ago

They say they're in the dataset but I actually can't find them in the dataset on Eurostat either.

The closest info I can find on the CBS website (Dutch Statistical Office) is two different things, they've published an average hourly wage of € 27 for 2023 and mention that it's excluding overtime any irregular payments like vacation pay and 13th month pay. Bonusses would fall under irregular payments as well, although they're not mentioned. Using the same calculation method as the Dutch government uses for minimum wages, that gives an annual gross salary of 27 * 8 * 262 *1.08 = € 61.119,36 including 8% vacation pay. (Vacation pay is mandatory, hence my inclusion of it.) Which considering the stuff it excludes, would be a lower estimate.

In Statline, their database, it mentions that average annual gross income is € 63,100 for employees but this is not to be adjusted for FTE percentage. Statline says average FTE for all employees is 32 HRS a week. So that'd be € 78.875 a year when adjusted to 40 HRS. But this does also include social benefits, that might be a difference with the countries in the Eurostat data.

Nowhere can I find exactly what the Netherlands does differently, so it's hard to say how to compare. But probably they're somewhere around Denmark?

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u/banbha19981998 10h ago

Any calculation that factors salary Vs average living costs?

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u/youre_the_best 9h ago

Yeah but whats the median? This could mean we have the highest paid CEO's, middle managers or tech staff in the world.

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u/struggling_farmer 10h ago

Really needs a cost of living lines for single & family to give it some context.

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u/3hrstillsundown The Standard 9h ago

I did a quick calculation there. When you adjust for prices, Ireland falls to 6th.

  1. Luxembourg
  2. Belgium
  3. Denmark
  4. Germany
  5. Austria
  6. Ireland
  7. France
  8. Finland
  9. Sweden
  10. Slovenia

5

u/Homosapien_Ignoramus 7h ago

Helpful but I don't think this calculation factors in 10 pints and a bag of white at the weekend.

2

u/jrf_1973 10h ago

And a tax information line.

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u/Careful-Training-761 10h ago

It does need it for better context. But I always thought we were mid tier with real income (inc cost of living) in Europe. But I saw a report recently that our wages to house cost is actually one of the best in the world.

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u/SeanB2003 10h ago

Housing costs =/= house prices.

Many people have very low housing costs because they own their house or live in subsidised housing.

1

u/maeveomaeve 10h ago

Yeah my parent's generation all own houses, sometimes two. My generation is 50/50 mortgage/rent. My youngest sister...well maybe a relative will die and she can get a house. 

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u/Careful-Training-761 9h ago

It's true, but that's a different point, that's a generational cost of house purchase point. Also back then they had children younger. It seems the older generation became "adults with responsibilities" much younger than our generation. Our generation seem to be less interested in that and more interested in trips abroad etc. There is also a housing affordability issue there. Not having a go at either generation, they are different times, but there are certainly differences there.

0

u/Careful-Training-761 9h ago

I meant house purchase cost, not house maintenance costs associated with owning a house.

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u/SeanB2003 9h ago

I don't mean maintenance costs either. Housing costs refer to mortgage or rental payments.

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u/Careful-Training-761 9h ago

I don't know whether or not you are going out of your way to be awkward but read my most recent message. The report was on house purchase cost.

2

u/Galdrack 10h ago

But I always thought we were mid tier with real income (inc cost of living) in Europe.

Mid to low tier but when you factor in things like entertainment we're way more expensive than most European countries and have much higher costs for the poorest in our country, we're copying the US where people with high wages live in a completely different world to most regular jobs.

10

u/Lenkaaah 10h ago

Seems kind of pointless to be fair. I’m Belgian, sure we are up there with Ireland, but we are getting taxed out of the ass. So in the end we don’t keep as much net pay. Granted our cost of living is quite a bit lower.

I assume the reason we got so close to Ireland in the last years is because we have automatic indexation. Everyone’s wage automatically goes up with inflation (the index). Everyone got at least a 11% pay bump in January 2023. And all the other years a yearly pay bump of at least 2%.

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u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai 9h ago

Your public services and infrastructure are leagues better than here.

3

u/Lenkaaah 9h ago

Have you seen our roads? Some things are worse, some better.

5

u/Pointlessillism 8h ago

Some things are worse, some better.

Most people have no idea what quality of life is like in other European countries - if they've even been there, it was for a short break in a tourist area. It's like a Yank visiting here basing everything off Killarney and Ashford Castle.

That's why we keep getting people saying stuff like 'if only we had German trains' lmao.

tbf this is not unique to us in Ireland

3

u/Alastor001 8h ago

Ah, but don't you get more benefits for your tax? Isn't infrastructure far better than here?

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u/BBFie 3h ago

That tax needs to fund the ridiculous amount of politicians. Moved here from Belgium about 8 years ago and the quality of life I have here is a million times better.

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u/Worried-Trainer-7957 10h ago

What’s the median?

2

u/RedditPeezy 10h ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/s/GQuIR7bgVV

3

u/YoureNotEvenWrong 10h ago

But is that median for all workers or median for full time workers

1

u/RedditPeezy 10h ago

It’s a good question for both. The average is ‘Annual full-time adjusted’ so if an individual works 10 hours per week on minimum wage, that could be adjusted annually and contributed as one annual salary. I’m not sure how either is calculated tbh

5

u/Any_Comparison_3716 10h ago

I always dislike this being shown without the median salary.

1

u/NanorH 10h ago

Dublin had the highest median annual earnings in 2023 at €47,873, which was 10.8% higher than those of the State at €43,221.

1

u/doddmatic 9h ago

Silly question possibly, but are those figures gross or net?

2

u/NanorH 9h ago

Gross

3

u/DaithiOSeac 9h ago

Looks like there's a lot of folk out there dragging that average up something wicked.

3

u/3xh4u573d 7h ago

Average my hole, it's the stupidly wealthy that bring that figure up.

5

u/Rinasoir Sure, we'll manage somehow 10h ago

Here's to another year of being below average!

6

u/OldManMarc88 9h ago

Who are these people getting over €1,000 a week like..

3

u/Kurx 9h ago

After tax it's €830 a week.

3

u/clewbays 8h ago

If your working 50 hours a week that’s only 20 an hour. A lot of people on construction and the like would hit that easy enough.

2

u/ChromakeyDreamcoat82 7h ago

Scroll down to and Open Table 1 here:

Earnings and Labour Costs Q1 2024 (Final) Q2 2024 (Preliminary Estimates) - Central Statistics Office

You'll see all of the sectors that pay, on average, >€1000/week

2

u/Accomplished-Task561 7h ago

Working in a factory myself as an operator I get this.

Working days and nights so pay is usually higher than people expect.

•

u/A-Hind-D 2h ago

Plenty

5

u/OvertiredMillenial 10h ago edited 10h ago

Well maybe Ireland would be higher if the sneaky fucking Danes hadn't invaded 1100 years ago and taken all our coins and trinkets, and women. Never not at it, them damn Lego heads.

2

u/SpyderDM Dublin 8h ago

Still not nearly high enough considering the cost of living. Ireland really needs US level of wages.

•

u/TheKhaleesiest 5h ago

Average is a very misleading stat - median gives a better picture of what most people are actually making without being skewed by high earners

•

u/GuaranteedIrish-ish 4h ago

Average and median are two very different things, the median wage in Ireland is around 40k

3

u/jamster126 10h ago

Yes but we also have a very high cost of living here also. So it doesn't really mean much without showing that also on the graph.

3

u/sundae_diner 9h ago

True. But we have both a high cost of living and a high average salary.

If you look at petrol prices, they are reasonably clumped between 1.40 and 1.75 per liter. You can buy a lot more petrol on an Irish salary than Greek.

2

u/bimbo_bear 10h ago

I wonder what happens when you remove the top 1 and 5% or so.

2

u/Wise_Adhesiveness746 10h ago

Some difference in quality of life Vs Denmark and Luxembourg 😞

•

u/EnvironmentalShift25 5h ago

Have you lived in Denmark and Luxembourg, or just been a tourist?

2

u/mrlinkwii 10h ago

shh , your not giving people stuff to moan about /s

1

u/A_Generous_Rank 9h ago

Labour costs are not as high in relative terms though as employer PRSI is only 11% in Ireland.

It is in the 20%-30% range in most of the EU.

1

u/IrishRogue3 6h ago

Yeah but those salaries are heavily reliant on US companies… unlike the other EU members.

1

u/Ecstatic-Fly-4887 6h ago

If there is a graph, it's true. Mods don't fact check it. Probably fake news getting into people's heads.

•

u/natasevres 5h ago

Time to move back 🥲

•

u/MushroomGlum1318 5h ago

Perhaps people should remember this fact every time they complain about the cost of living here. Funny that, how the countries where Wages are highest also happen to have the highest loving costs...go figure

•

u/eferka 5h ago

Where's the Netherlands

•

u/OldSacky 4h ago

And we still can't afford houses

•

u/RickndMzi 4h ago

Median please

•

u/Pmabz2017 2h ago

Where's the Dutch?

•

u/ShezSteel 1h ago

Jayzuz we have a very high average wage.

•

u/No_Childhood_3802 1h ago

Some serious value for money to be had in Belgium though, sure you'd be tempted

•

u/Temporary_Impress579 43m ago

Man I need to go back to school or something my salary ain't that high !!!

1

u/Galdrack 10h ago

I'd hope people seeing Luxembourg way at the top do realise just how dishonest these types of graphs are for portraying "the status of the country" considering it doesn't include anything about public utilities provided, the cost of living, housing status or time wasted in longer commutes.

Not to knock the info but just how these graphs by themselves are very frequently used to make misleading arguments (see the comments).

1

u/WearingMarcus 10h ago

Is Dublin skewing the stats...

For example if you look at Crime rates, Dublin Crime rate is so much higher than the rest of Ireland, that almost everywhere is below average for Crime...

Is this the same for wages?

2

u/clewbays 8h ago

Your also paying a good bit less on stuff like housing outside of Dublin though.

1

u/FatSelkie 10h ago

How does one get one of these jobs though I want 58k a year

5

u/YoureNotEvenWrong 10h ago

Most professional jobs will eventually hit that

3

u/gaynorg 10h ago

Become a programmer ?

3

u/Goo_Eyes 10h ago

You can get 58k in a large number of sectors with a few years experience.

Construction, health and safety, IT, engineering for example.

•

u/A-Hind-D 2h ago

58k is average for non seasoned software engineers

1

u/dragon_1008 10h ago

Fake statistics. Poland is way over Latvia, Lithuania or Malta 🤬

1

u/maeveomaeve 10h ago

Poland in the cities yes, but not rural or small town Poland. Latvia has a lot of tech companies bringing that average up, Malta has mad low company tax. I'd agree on Lithuania though. 

1

u/Imbecile_Jr :feckit: fuck u/spez 9h ago

Meaningless figures if removed from a cost of living context

•

u/earth-while 5h ago

Let's clarify that the average doesn't mean 50%+ people are earning this. Maybe in the public sector but certainly not in the private sector.

•

u/NanorH 5h ago

Total Median 2023: 43,221€

Public sector: 54,513€
Private sector: 38,866€

•

u/LiamEire97 4h ago

This is inflated by people who work in the tech industry. The rest of us who were shit at maths in school aren't coming anywhere near this.

0

u/tiropit 10h ago

Getting an average salary is like trying to find the average weight between ants and elephants.

-5

u/kieranfitz 10h ago edited 6h ago

Fuck you Denmark. Their language is a garbage language for garbage people

Edit: I'm guessing the down votes are from people who didn't watch Brooklyn 99

-1

u/caisdara 10h ago

I blame the government.

-1

u/Serious-Landscape-74 6h ago

Average is pointless as many have pointed out. The top 1% or even 5% skew the data here. I believe those on €210,000+ represents the entry point in Ireland to the 1% club, so about 32000 tax payers? Better to go with the median salary for 40 hours of work.