Cost of living doesn’t have to be taken into account in a salary analysis because everyone has a different cost of living. It’s not called a “quality of life” analysis.
Because everyone has a different cost of living is exactly why it needs to be taken into account when comparing salaries.
If it were just reporting regional salaries then that would be different. But when you then generalise salaries across lots of regions with wildly different cost of living, then you either need to adjust for regional variations or add massive disclaimers that these are superficial figures and cannot be used as a basis of comparison.
Does the analysis say anything about purchasing power? I mean, if someone is dumb enough to read just this one article and move to a different country because there was no disclaimer… I expect the target audience to have at least rudimentary critical thinking ability.
I wouldn’t suggest people are dumb enough to move, but people are certainly dumb enough to make widely inaccurate conclusions (as they have done here).
If it were just reporting regional salaries then that would be different. But when you then generalise salaries across lots of regions with wildly different cost of living, then you either need to adjust for regional variations or add massive disclaimers that these are superficial figures and cannot be used as a basis of comparison.