Salary Overview
COMPARED TO THE 2016 SURVEY, SALARIES ARE DOWN ABOUT $10,000 despite an increase in salaries from US respondents. Here’s what’s behind this drop:
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US respondents report much higher median salaries than the rest of the world: $115K in 2017, up about 5% over 2016.
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The share of US respondents dropped from 61% to 46% of our total.
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Western European respondents reported lower salaries ($58K), nearly 7% lower than what was reported last year.
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European salaries were effectively reduced by the rising value of the US Dollar compared to the British Pound (up 16%) and Euro (up 8%) compared to 2016.
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The share of Western European respondents increased from 20% to 26%.
Note
US respondents report much higher median salaries than the rest of the world.
Countries with varying supply and demand conditions, different healthcare and tax regimes, volatile exchange rates, and other factors all make comparing salaries worldwide difficult at best. For a non-numerical perspective on salaries, we asked respondents to rate their satisfaction with their salaries. Despite the differences in salaries by country and region, about 50% of the non-student respondents were satisfied, 31% were neutral, leaving only about 20% unhappy with what they make.
Students show a less happy picture, with 37% positive toward their salaries, 29% neutral, and 34% unhappy. The most unsatisfied student group seem justified in their gloom, with a median salary of just over $11K!
Note
In the horizontal bar charts throughout this report, we include the interquartile range (IQR) to show the middle 50% of respondents’ answers to questions such as salary. One quarter of the respondents has a salary below the displayed range, and one quarter has a salary above the displayed range.
