[deng]

It's the median salary: 50% of people earn more than 62.4k. 10% earn more than 80k. It's still low compared to the US, but what isn't?

For this, you get proper health and unemployment insurance, usually 30 days of paid vacation, up to 6 weeks of sick leave with full salary, up to 10 days to take care of sick children with full salary, paternal leave, the right to work part-time if desired, and so on. I don't know where you get the "people can be let go anytime" have from, because Germany is pretty famous for its "Kündigungsschutz" and it's very hard to let people go because of performance issues alone, which is why things like stack ranking and performance improvement plans pretty much do not exist here.

I can understand if young people without kids do not care about these things and just want the money. However, once you get older, you'll see the advantages.

[rockyj]

I agree with you partly. The benefits are great & fairly above international norms. But I do not agree with the "firing protection" anymore. Last year alone I saw thousands let go in Berlin in fairly large organizations like neobanks for example. I myself saw my previous employer let go of 30% of the staff over the year. A simple Google search of - "Berlin IT firings 2025" will give you a picture.

[mixmastamyk]

That’s interesting, how does hard-to-fire law combine with a company that needs to have layoffs?

[yobbo]

Hard-to-fire typically means only specific and provable reasons are valid.

"Shrinking the org" is a valid reason.

[menaerus]

I guess it works for companies which are not part of the union?

[Ylpertnodi]

"The union" should be "a union", of which, companies are rarely a part of ie zero. Their workforce may be a member of a union, some equals in grade may belong to different unions.

[menaerus]

Thank you for your generous correction but you could rather address the point I was trying to make.

[yobbo]

On page 41 you can find average, median, and top10 salaries for Germany by experience levels. Junior/regular/senior medians are 52.5k/60k/67.5k.

Average is 62.4k.