Average != median. This measure seems to be so high because there are so many low paid workers in the US due to low minimum wage.

Median workers in the US have some of the highest hourly wages at PPP in the rich world and they have been increasing, but they are pretty similar to those in Germany. The big difference in annual pay at PPP is down to hours worked.

For 2022 average annual hours worked per worker in the US is 1790 while in Germany it is 1340 [1]. Meanwhile average hourly wages at PPP in US are $34.9 vs $34.6 in Germany [2]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings

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janalsncm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wonder if there’s also some difficulty in translation happening due to adding up inverted numbers for example 1/(a+b+c+…) != 1/a+1/b+1/c+…

	▲	orangecat 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's exactly what's going on. The inverses are very sensitive to small changes at the low end.

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tovej 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You forget that in the US, even with PPP, the level of "comfortable" is higher, due to missing social safety nets.

This means using PPP doesn't actually show where the level of precarity is.

	▲	laurencerowe 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Life in the US is definitely more precarious than in Europe but that has been the case for a long time while median real earnings after stagnating from about 2001 to 2015 have been growing well since then. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q There is a huge mismatch between perception and data. I wonder whether some costs are just more pertinent?