USA, why do you use yearly salaries when discussing remuneration?

[Khasim]

This has been bugging me for some time. Where I live nobody ever mentions how much they make a year except when yearly personal income tax brackets are discussed. Any time anybody asks anyone 'how much money do you make?' the answer is how much money you get paid every month, because that's how the overwhelming majority of people get paid.
Any time I see American discuss how much money they make though, they mention their yearly salaries, you have this whole concept of making 'six figures' which is like a milestone for being well off I guess. But you don't pay rent yearly, you don't pay your bills yearly (I assume?), so is the yearly salary number actually useful or is it like the imperial measurement system where you only use it because you're used to it, not because it makes sense?

EDIT: crap, wrong section, reporting the thread to get it moved. Sorry.
EDIT2: Thanks mods! I don't make threads too often and forgot to make sure i was in the right section.

 

[Wrexis]

Uh, it's not just the USA. Same in Europe.

Some people do not get paid every month either, so then you have to ask the question "Uh, per week? Per month? Every two months?" etc.

 

[Khasim]

Uh, it's not just the USA. Same in Europe.

Some people do not get paid every month either, so then you have to ask the question "Uh, per week? Per month? Every two months?" etc.

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'Europe' is not a country, I live in Europe. All the job offers I've seen from abroad also show monthly pay.

 

[FliX]

A big difference in the US, and something that still bothers me is that you often get paid every two weeks as opposed to every month.
So I get 26 paychecks not 12, which makes montly budgeting more convoluted, because things like rent, subscriptions etc. are all monthly...

 

[Finale Fireworker]

the answer is how much money you get paid every month, because that's how the overwhelming majority of people get paid.

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This is definitely not true in the United States. People get paid weekly or biweekly, with biweekly being the common corporate standard. Getting paid monthly is a more European thing, I believe. Edit: Not just Europe, it seems!

 

[tangeu]

Lots of folks get paid every other week which makes a monthly take an average calculation...easier to just give the yearly

 

[JCH!]

Europe here. I don't think I've ever come across anything but yearly.

 

[Patryn]

As has been said, most companies in the US seem to pay every 2 weeks, which doesn't line up neatly with months, meaning calculating your monthly take-home is very difficult. Easier to just say what you make in a year, since if you're salaried that'll be how any offer or raise is presented.

Other common ways of being paid in the US is monthly, yes, but also sometimes twice a month (15th and last day), weekly, etc. So there's such a wide variety, yearly is the only way to easily compare.

 

[KOfLegend]

This is definitely not true in the United States. People get paid weekly or biweekly, with biweekly being the common corporate standard. Getting paid monthly is a more European thing, I believe.

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I'm from the Middle East and we get paid monthly here as well. I always thought the weekly pay, "I make X an hour," and yearly income was just a US thing.

 

[Dyle]

Annual is just easier. Lots of jobs do not pay the same month to month due to inconsistent schedules, lots of jobs pay biweekly, the big number you need to remember for taxes is annual, etc.

 

[Titanpaul]

This is not uniquely USA.

 

[DopeToast]

Here in the United States, I have never had a job that paid monthly and I've never known anyone to be paid monthly. Most are paid bi-weekly or weekly. And for salaried positions, the yearly amount is what is offered to you.

 

[RadzPrower]

Man, I'd be financially wrecked if I only got paid once a month. Livin' on ramen for the last week of every month. Hell, I get paid twice a month and I'm still pinching pennies a week before I get paid sometimes.

To actually address the question though, it's probably a product of corporate U.S. and how they budget on a yearly basis.

 

[Hollywood Duo]

Depends on your pay structure, for example I get a yearly salary so I would respond in those terms but the IT contractors who work on my team get an hourly rate so I would expect they say something like "I bill 150 an hour to my clients"

 

[Annubis]

Because you instantly know which tax bracket you'll be in.

 

[entrydenied]

One thing it does is that looking at your total monetary compensation per year helps gauge whether someone should go into a new role, or take a new job offer for example. If you just think in terms of per month, you might miss out on considering bonuses and other monetary compensation. A company might offer higher monthly salaries to look outwardly more attractive but fail to mention that they do not guarantee yearly bonuses and other cash components. The job you might end up with could give you less cash per year.

 

[OrangeNova]

Canada here, I get paid monthly, my partner gets paid bi-weekly, my dad gets paid twice a month...

Annual pay is easy to calculate others off of if you're so inclined and doesn't rely on you knowing when someone gets paid.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I'm from the Middle East and we get paid monthly here as well. I always thought the weekly pay, "I make X an hour," and yearly income was just a US thing.

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I wonder if it's more widespread across the world than I realized. I'd be curious to learn where else monthly checks are common.

 

[Couleurs]

A big difference in the US, and something that still bothers me is that you often get paid every two weeks as opposed to every month.
So I get 26 paychecks not 12, which makes montly budgeting more convoluted, because things like rent, subscriptions etc. are all monthly...

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until you get to a month with 3 paychecks and it feels like free money

 

[captive]

A big difference in the US, and something that still bothers me is that you often get paid every two weeks as opposed to every month.
So I get 26 paychecks not 12, which makes montly budgeting more convoluted, because things like rent, subscriptions etc. are all monthly...

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Some also get paid 2 times a month so 24 paychecks.

But I don't see how that hurts monthly budgeting.



Every offer letter I've gotten has laid out how you get paid monthly which ads up to the yearly figure

 

[Lkr]

A big difference in the US, and something that still bothers me is that you often get paid every two weeks as opposed to every month.
So I get 26 paychecks not 12, which makes montly budgeting more convoluted, because things like rent, subscriptions etc. are all monthly...

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this all depends on your job. you can get paid weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc depending on the company.

im always confused when negotiating contracts in manager mode of fifa, because wages are a weekly rate. im used to knowing athletes make X amount annually in the US lol

 

[Rosebud]

It got me REALLY confused and shocked for a moment when I joined the site.

"This guy makes 80k a MONTH?"

 

[CitizenVectron]

Canada here: I get paid twice per month, as does my wife (not biweekly). We still would discuss annual salaries if talking about what we make.

 

[Wrexis]

'Europe' is not a country, I live in Europe. All the job offers I've seen from abroad also show monthly pay.

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True, but your single career and job offers are also not an indication of how a large chunk of the world works.

Monster.com - UK job. Yearly.

ie.indeed.com - Ireland. Yearly.

Glassdoor.com - Portugal. Yearly.

de.indeed.com - Germany - Yearly.

 

[Khasim]

TIL most of you get paid bi-weekly and there's no consensus on how often people get paid, what the actual hell. That seems like a nightmare to budget and yeah it does make sense you just agreed to discuss it yearly.

I'm from the Middle East and we get paid monthly here as well. I always thought the weekly pay, "I make X an hour," and yearly income was just a US thing.

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Hourly wages make sense for people who work shifts or freelancers like programmers or lawyers who literally get paid by the hour.

 

[Darth Karja]

Because we don't all get paid the same. Some jobs pay weekly, others every two weeks. Most jobs are hourly. So you either say yearly salary or your hourly rate. I don't know anyone paid monthly.

 

[Ryuelli]

I'm a teacher in the US, I get paid monthly. Our contracts are 10 month contracts and, at least in my district, we can choose to have whatever that amount would have added up to to be paid over 10 months (and not get paid during the summer), or stretch those 10 months out to 12 and get paid during the summer. Most people do the ladder, because it makes budgeting easier.

In this field salary really isn't negotiable either, it just... is.

When I was teaching in Korea I also got paid monthly.

 

[Sabretooth]

Thanks for the thread, I'd been wondering this myself but it always seemed like too trivial a thing to actually ask.

 

[808s & Villainy]

'Europe' is not a country, I live in Europe. All the job offers I've seen from abroad also show monthly pay.

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...are you trying to prove yourself wrong?

 

[gattotimo]

This has been bugging me for some time. Where I live nobody ever mentions how much they make a year except when yearly personal income tax brackets are discussed. Any time anybody asks anyone 'how much money do you make?' the answer is how much money you get paid every month, because that's how the overwhelming majority of people get paid.
Any time I see American discuss how much money they make though, they mention their yearly salaries, you have this whole concept of making 'six figures' which is like a milestone for being well off I guess. But you don't pay rent yearly, you don't pay your bills yearly (I assume?), so is the yearly salary number actually useful or is it like the imperial measurement system where you only use it because you're used to it, not because it makes sense?

EDIT: crap, wrong section, reporting the thread to get it moved. Sorry.
EDIT2: Thanks mods! I don't make threads too often and forgot to make sure i was in the right section.

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I also talk wages by yearly gross income rather than monthly, but I'm in the minority here (Italy). I still think it's the better and more 'neutral' way to compare it, since it removes from the equation how many paychecks one get per year (most employees here get 13, but some get 14 and some 15 or even 16).

 

[Psittacus]

Being paid monthly sounds AWFUL. But also do you get paid more some months than others or is your pay uneven over the year?

 

[Lunchbox-]

same workers get paid monthly, some weekly, some daily, some bi-weekly.

no one is breaking down every single pay scale because "europe isn't used to it." so we use yearly because it captures every one.

also every european payroll i've been exposed to (UK and Germany) use yearly numbers

 

[Zoe]

Because we don't all get paid the same. Some jobs pay weekly, others every two weeks. Most jobs are hourly. So you either say yearly salary or your hourly rate. I don't know anyone paid monthly.

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It's common in education.

Being paid monthly sounds AWFUL. But also do you get paid more some months than others or is your pay uneven over the year?

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My employer makes all months equal which can make leaving in the middle of the year tricky since you might have worked less than you've been paid so far.

 

[pbayne]

Payroll can be split into many different pay period, week, biweekly, monthly, quartlery...so it just makes sense to list the yearly salary as default since its the best general indication of what someone will be paid.

Being paid monthly sounds AWFUL. But also do you get paid more some months than others or is your pay uneven over the year?

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Depends if you are a salary or hourly paid(though not a lot of hourly paid monthly contracts in my experience). In general a lot of salaried employee yearly salary is simply divided by twelve and paid every month (usally like the last friday of the month).

 

[gattotimo]

Being paid monthly sounds AWFUL. But also do you get paid more some months than others or is your pay uneven over the year?

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Don't know if this as directed at me, anyway being paid monthly is pretty standard here. As I said earlier depending on the job and the company some months have an extra paycheck in it (usually on the 14th of such 'lucky' months), so there's some uneveness over the year

 

[Necromanti]

Had no clue getting paid bi-weekly was the "corporate standard" in America. Guess it has to do with the fields I've been in. I've only ever been paid monthly at all my jobs and hadn't heard of any different for salaried positions.

 

[Kazooie]

A big difference in the US, and something that still bothers me is that you often get paid every two weeks as opposed to every month.
So I get 26 paychecks not 12, which makes montly budgeting more convoluted, because things like rent, subscriptions etc. are all monthly...

Click to shrink...

Does this really make a difference? In Germany, where you come from, you usually get the payment for the current month at the end of the month. If you get parts of the payment two weeks earliert, this does not make it more difficult, unless you don't plan your spending at all, does it?

Yearly wage is easier to compare because some people get bonusses, others get seasonal extra payments, others don't get either. Some people even have seasonally different pay. By comparing yearly payment you normalise different distributions of income.

 

[Dinjooh]

Being paid monthly sounds AWFUL. But also do you get paid more some months than others or is your pay uneven over the year?

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why..?

 

[NotVeryFriendly]

I'm in Ireland and I've always seen yearly pay advertised.

I've generally been paid monthly (or for one company every 28 days which was horrendous) but would never discuss salary in gross-monthly terms. Anecdotally, when I used to work in a tax-focused environment (as a data science consultant; we focused on analysing tax which in some cases involved analysing local and international payroll data) payroll data was almost always considered in annual terms and then appropriately divided.

EDIT: And specifically on it being a discussion point, annual is easy because it's consistent and an easy conversion regardless of your pay schedule.

EDIT:

Being paid monthly sounds AWFUL. But also do you get paid more some months than others or is your pay uneven over the year?

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For salaries, take your gross annual salary and divide it by 12. That's your monthly gross salary. It doesn't matter that some months have more days and some less, the pay is based off the annual income and then appropriately divided by your pay schedule.

For wages, it depends on how many hours you work from month to month (which yes, could impact your pay from month to month but for a wage your pay is variable anyway).

 

[Stat]

So I get paid biweekly and I don't have consistent pay through out the year. Why? Cause part of my salary is withheld due to taxes/UEI, and as the year goes on and I reach that quota, my salary "increases". So its much easier to say/know, that I get paid X per year.

 

[TaySan]

USA here and every job was bi-weekly for me.

 

[Coen]

I'm from Holland, living and working in Belgium for work at the moment. Every serious job I've ever applied for featured both a monthly salary and a yearly sum, which included things like end-of-year bonuses and holiday pay. I think there's value in both.

My wife get's payed by the day, which is hard to budget. But she makes a lot of money.

 

[FliX]

Does this really make a difference? In Germany, where you come from, you usually get the payment for the current month at the end of the month. If you get parts of the payment two weeks earliert, this does not make it more difficult, unless you don't plan your spending at all, does it?

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It's not difficult perse, but I have monthly expenses and would prefer monthly income. 😛
I mean ideally I would like to "spend" it all as anything I don't spend gets invested. But as it is I am short 10 months and over paid 2 months of the year... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Metanoia Prime]

Haven't seen a good OP fail / thread backfire in a while. Thanks for this.

Had no clue getting paid bi-weekly was the "corporate standard" in America. Guess it has to do with the fields I've been in. I've only ever been paid monthly at all my jobs and hadn't heard of any different for salaried positions.

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Do you work for any sort of government institution (whether federal, state, local, etc.)? My wife works in Corrections and she gets paid monthly. Friend works for the DA and she's paid monthly. Another friend is a sheriff, and he's paid monthly.

 

[MrKlaw]

Does this really make a difference? In Germany, where you come from, you usually get the payment for the current month at the end of the month. If you get parts of the payment two weeks earliert, this does not make it more difficult, unless you don't plan your spending at all, does it?

Yearly wage is easier to compare because some people get bonusses, others get seasonal extra payments, others don't get either. Some people even have seasonally different pay. By comparing yearly payment you normalise different distributions of income.

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if you pay rent by calendar month then you can get out of sync and may need a buffer of some kind to cover when rent is due but your 2-weekly check isn't coming until next Thursday for instance. I can imagine that being a total PITA.

I'm used to monthly as salaried, and only my early jobs were paid weekly. I realise thats normal to me but I'm actually surprised at 2-weekly being common in the US

As for getting paid the same for different length months - well it averages out right? You don't pay more rent in April compared to February becuase there are three more days in it

 

[L Thammy]

I'd have to check, but I feel like you get annual numbers if it's a salaried position. If you get paid by the hour, then you get hourly numbers and have to calculate the annual yourself.

I'm also pretty sure biweekly payment is far more common than monthly at the jobs that I've looked and worked at.

 

[Serule]

Does this really make a difference? In Germany, where you come from, you usually get the payment for the current month at the end of the month. If you get parts of the payment two weeks earliert, this does not make it more difficult, unless you don't plan your spending at all, does it?

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You are describing 24 paychecks a year. Many US jobs pay biweekly - 26 paychecks a year. Those paychecks arrive at different times each month, sometimes lining up nicely with your monthly bills, sometimes not. If you are doing well maybe you can budget based on 92% (24/26) of your pay and treat the extra two paychecks as a bonus, but many can't.

FWIW: I am in US - my old job paid my salary biweekly (26 pays); my current job pays my salary twice a month (24 pays).

 

[Khasim]

Haven't seen a good OP fail / thread backfire in a while. Thanks for this.

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You're welcome. This taught me I don't know shit about pay standards across the world. Good opportunity to learn I guess.

 

[julia crawford]

I've seen this become more common where i live and it really breaks my brain. I work in tech, my contract specifies a monthly remuneration... but if i search online, it will sometimes be advertised as yearly. And in interviews the salary is discussed in monthly values. So it makes zero sense, and feels like a strange way to just show bigger numbers with added work to figure out how much it will be per month, and then wonder does this include the 13th salary? Maybe? Maybe not?

I'm convinced this is an effort to standardize online sharing of salaries and does not reflect how people in that culture actually discuss the matter.

 

[Psittacus]

For salaries, take your gross annual salary and divide it by 12. That's your monthly gross salary. It doesn't matter that some months have more days and some less, the pay is based off the annual income and then appropriately divided by your pay schedule.

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I don't understand why you would do this when you could pay people fortnightly or weekly.

As for getting paid the same for different length months - well it averages out right? You don't pay more rent in April compared to February becuase there are three more days in it

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Wait you pay rent monthly too? Wiiiilllldddd. Here it's weekly.