A hard truth I've heard in CEO circles is that western middle classes are falling down in terms of purchasing-power; And they will continue to do so until they join Chinese middle classes levels of revenue.
I'd be fairly surprised that American disposable purchasing power would fall to around $3-4k USD a year, unless by "middle class" your peers meant the professional class in China (the kind that can afford to splurge on a new iPhone every year, buy a Xiaomi SU7, and send their kids to do a bachelors degree at UCB, UCLA, or UIUC), in which case I wouldn't be too surprised simply because of how much growth was captured by that subset, and salaries for that subset are at France/Germany levels, but those countries also severely underpay professionals tbh.
Even professional salaries at employers like Google India or Gojek Engineering in Bangalore, Jakarta, etc can pay German or French level dev salaries, let alone the subset of similar companies in China that can afford to pay around $20-100k USD salaries (depends on the city)
> signal on 1) experience with new EUV processes and 2) cost of labor. That's not taking into account the expensive EUV amortization
Yep. There's a reason Intel and GlobalFoundaries have the last American owned Fabs - most other players left the industry in the 2010s due to the massive costs, though it's a similar story in China as well which was only solved by the "Big Fund", but a similar Cambrian die off happened in the 2017-20 period which basically only left SMIC (comparable to TSMC or Intel in the early 2010s), Hong Hua (comparable to Tower), and YMTC (comparable PSMC or SK Hynix)
Not even close. Indian devs at top companies earn way more then European devs at local non-top-tech companies.
>unless by "middle class" your peers meant the professional class in China (the kind that can afford to splurge on a new iPhone every year, buy a Xiaomi SU7, and send their kids to do a bachelors degree at UCB, UCLA, or UIUC)
How many Chinese families (percentual speaking) can actually afford that?
At a product company like Ola or a top MNC like Google you are earning way above most Europeans excluding Netherlands, Switzerland, and maybe London, but if I had to estimate, Product+MNC companies only make up like 30-40% of the ecosystem in India today.
If you're working for a mass recruiter your mid-career salary will top off around the $8-20k range, which is Eastern European level, but lower than France and Germany (where it's around the $40-60k range).
Also, there are regional variations in salaries in India as well. You're more likely to earn much higher working in an established tech or MNC hub like BLR, HYD, NCR, or PN than in Indore, Kolkata, Chennai, or Ahmedabad, where the tech scene skews towards outsourced contracting.
Government dev salaries are lowish (depending on the Ministry and whether it's central or state), but the perks are solid.
I'd probably say the split is 35-45-20 Product-WITCH-Govt.
Edit: You said "Top". Fair enough. Yea, the salaries at top employers like Google India or Flipkart are extremely competitive by European standards and are comparable to those in Mainland China, Israel, and Canada.
Are you talking about software and tech in general? Because that's several times lower than the average. In every single East European country in the EU, the average ~~monthly~~ [edit: yearly] wage (I'm talking about the whole population) is at least 18-20k and you certainly can't find any actual developers for anything even close to that.
Polish boosterism is almost as annoying as Indian boosterism tbh - both seem to come from a place of insecurity and heavily play up some positives while ignoring the negatives. If you listen to Polish or Indian nationalists, you'd think Poland or India are major superpowers already and have been for decades.
Is this a side effect of PiS's hypernationalist media in the 2010s? Or is this some weird alt-right Catholic White Nationalism fetish?
[0] - https://stat.gov.pl/files/gfx/portalinformacyjny/pl/defaulta...
I see a lot of projection going on here. No, you were not talking about average disposable income you were talking about salaries for workers in tech. This is what you wrote:
> if you're working for a mass recruiter your mid-career salary will top off around the $8-20k range, which is Eastern European level, but lower than France and Germany (where it's around the $40-60k range).
The average salary for all employes in all sector in Poland is > $24k. Are you implying that you can hire tech workers or even software engineers for considerably less than the national average? Seems highly far fetched.
Was this an unintentional mistake or are you doing it on purpose. Considering the totally uncalled for diatribe about Polish(I'm neither Polish nor have anything to do with it for that matter) nationalism unfortunately it's probably the second?
You made it about average incomes when you said your average Eastern European - not Eastern European techie - earns around $18k-20k a year when every government from Poland to Romania to Bulgaria has provided statistics proving otherwise.
> government from Poland to Romania to Bulgaria has provided statistics proving otherwise
Can you please stop being obtuse? That's not particularly entertaining at this point..
> earns around $18k-20k a year
The average salary in Poland AFTER TAX is around $17k, GROSS is almost $24k. I'm not sure why are you fixated about this. That average income is tangential to the whole discussion fact is you certainly can't find any software developers/etc. for $8k primarily because that's actually below any minimum wage in any EU country besides Bulgaria. You would really struggle to hire anyone even remotely decent for $20k as well.
Median disposable household income in Poland is around $600/mo [0], only $200/mo more than in China
Median monthly household income in Romania is around $545/mo [1], so disposable is probably comparable to China.
Median monthly household income in Bulgaria is around $600-700/mo [2], so disposable is probably comparable to Poland.
The only Eastern European country that broke the $1k/mo barrier was Estonia with around $1k/mo [3].
These are all government statistics from the Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Estonian government.
Eastern Europe has developed significantly, but still lags behind Western Europe massively.
Based on the hiring packages we've given to developers in Warsaw, the salaries were around $30-40k, but we could have paid much less if we hired someone from EPAM.
[0] - https://stat.gov.pl/files/gfx/portalinformacyjny/pl/defaulta...
[1] - https://insse.ro/cms/sites/default/files/com_presa/com_pdf/a...
[2] - https://www.mlsp.government.bg/obshchiyat-dokhod-na-domakins...
[3] - https://www.stat.ee/et/avasta-statistikat/valdkonnad/tooelu/...
You don't just seem to know that disposable income and average wage/salary is not the same thing..
The numbers which are on Wikipedia are AVERAGE. I'm using MEDIAN
The fact that the AVERAGE income skews significantly higher than MEDIAN income is proof that you have a subset earning much much more than the majority.
I have to question your reading comprehension. You're talking about median DISPOSABLE INCOME per capita (so it would include, disabled, retired, unemployed, part-time etc. workers). The Wikipedia link showing the average WAGE/SALARY. These are not the same thing.
>Are you talking about software and tech in general? Because that's several times lower than the average.
Or, even just keep talking about single subject: when given average income stop talking about median _disposable_ income.
https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/wages
Or even read source correctly:
>Median disposable household income in Poland is around $600/mo [0], only $200/mo more than in China
It's not true: according to https://stat.gov.pl/files/gfx/portalinformacyjny/pl/defaulta...
it's median disposable income _per capita_. Directly translated by chatgpt:
>The level of average monthly disposable income per person, rounded to the nearest 1 PLN in 2022, amounted to 2250 PLN.
> the salaries were around $30-40k, but we could have paid much less if we hired someone from EPAM.
If pre-tax that's quite low, but yeah you might be able to find junior/equivalent engineers for this much.
Also I just realized that all the number I posted were in € and not $ so add another 8%.
> Eastern Europe has developed significantly, but still lags behind Western Europe massively
Never implied otherwise.
Do you mean they finally figured that they can just continue the shift of wealth to the few?
I guess it's just one of those darned hard truths.
That being said, it does seem likely that the US living standards will drop. It isn't obvious what is supposed to be driving living standards given that the US has been undermining its own energy and manufacturing sectors. Their political situation also seems to be deteriorating.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
European wealth is generational. Land and homes that have been in the family from infrastructure that has stood the test of time.
Chinese wealth is rather New money and it’s all paper thin based on construction that isn’t built to last. Look at Guangzhou they are already relocating their downtown. Before it was Baiyun then it became tianhe, now they’re focusing on making New Baiyun already in just 20 years.
Depends where in Europe and where in China.
Beijing, Shanghai, and Greater Bay Area have definitely converged with Central Europe (eg. Praha, Warsaw, Budapest, maybe even Wien)
The rest of urban China has converged with Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Türkiye, Serbia) and Thailand+Malaysia.
Rural and some of the poorer provinces are still stuck around India levels.
There's a reason why household incomes per capita are still around $450/mo [0] - significantly lower than Thailand [1] or Serbia [2]. Per Capita Urban Household Income is around $7k/yr but for Rural Households it is around $2.5k/yr
I know some Chinese will find this a hot take, but this urban-rural divide is very similar to Brazil and Mexico, both countries that share similar developmental indicators to China.
[0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202402/t202402...
[1] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023...
[2] - https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/vesti/statisticalrelease/?p=15...
> Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Türkiye, Serbia)
Warsaw is the capital of Poland.
I live in Poland for 40 years, I'm biased, but I'd say that if you're looking for "western" cities - it's not Warsaw but Gdańsk or Poznań. Warsaw will keep its post-soviet mentality at least until the generation remembering WW2 is alive. Of course younger people may lack exposure to it, but I'm generalising on city/region-level.
Eastern Poland might have a fairly conservative society (as is reflected by Sejm and Presidential election results), but because Warsaw is the political, financial, and social capital of Poland, social and economic infrastructure is much stronger there than in other parts of Poland - west or east.
It's the same way that Beijing is luxurious but very socially conservative compared to Shanghai.