I think this is mostly a US thing. Why use yearly salary? You’re not paid once a year, are you? Most likely once a month. Referencing monthly salary makes much more sense.
“I’m making 50k”. Great, now I have to guess - dollars? Monthly? Yearly? If yearly then what’s the monthly paycheck? Net? Gross?
In my country you collect 14 salaries. So yearly salary is just the only sensible way to compare internationally.
Please elaborate on the 14 salaries? I’m in Canada, I would guess at most I could claim 3. My occupation, the rebates I get from the federal government, and the rebates from the provincial one would amount to my ‘income’ each year.
My bad, I didn’t get notified someone replied to my comment and only just checked. As mentioned below in this thread, I meant we get 14 monthly salary payments, where “months” 13 and 14 are less taxed and are tacked onto a summer and winter month as a holiday and christmas bonus, respectively.
They mean they get paid their monthly salary 14 times.
Why 14?
Edit: other parts of this thread make it clear months 13 and 14 are bonuses the employee is entitled to. Spain does not use a 14 month calendar.
Correct, they’re ‘bonuses’
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Here in Canada, your income is denoted and discussed as hourly if you have an unpredictable schedule like shift work and annually if you work steady hours all year like in an office. We call the latter a salary, the former is a wage. You’ll usually get paid every 2 weeks or twice a month on set dates in either case. Hourly employees don’t get paid every hour, salaried employees don’t get paid every year, it’s just the units discussed in negotiation.
If you are talking to someone and they say how much they make it’s obvious from context whether they mean hourly or annually. $25 and $60,000 are very obviously hourly and salary respectively. If not, asking takes a couple seconds and isn’t rude.
Why annual salaries? Because culture is confusing mess and everything we have today stands on piles of chaotic history. Maybe saying big numbers sounds cooler; fashion drives culture more than any practical reasons. Asking why any culture does anything is an exercise in sanity, and any answer is a guess, especially here.
I think it’s probably one of those things that is stupid until you reach a point of financial success or fall into groups that consider your financial wealth important. Why it’s a thing is probably because we pay our taxes once a year and that’s when it’s laid bare and you see how much you made. So after 10 or 20 years you kinda know what 50k a year is and if someone is talking about making that much you can understand the lack of money they have. If you friend tells you that, don’t ask them out to expensive things unless you’re going to pay the bill.
Is 50k per year below average in the US? Is it hard to survive on that amount?
If you have a family it’s poverty wage.
It depends significantly on location and living situation, but 50k ranges from moderately comfortable all the way to poverty line.
To add to the other poster, in the USA we have calculators for these things.
There is lots of info available, but a short answer is:
The real median earnings of all workers aged 15 and over with earnings decreased 1.2 percent between 2019 and 2020 from $42,065 to $41,535
Comparing that to where I live.
The median is about $37k per year.
On the other hand. I make around $13k, single household, studio flat close to the city center and I make do just ok. Wouldn’t hurt to earn a bit more. But on the other hand I work a bit less than 50%. It’s hard to find work though and inflation is making living harder.
I can’t even compare wages with my partner if we have to go by monthly rate.
I get paid per month, but in May I get an 8% bonus, so my monthly payment is not the same throughout the year. Then my partner gets paid every 4 weeks, and receives bonuses based on company performance in those 4 weeks. So every payment is different.
Per annum is the only way we can compare our salaries. And that’s in the same country. Now try international, and it’ll really difficult otherwise soon.
I live in the Netherlands.
As a freelance steadicam operator, my daily rate can vary between $2000 and $4000 per day (including my personal equipment rental). But I don’t work every day, far from it (especially during the current strikes) so a monthly rate is irrelevant. A yearly net revenue is a mettre measure.
In France we often have additional months paid, 13 or 14 months, as an additional pay check in June and December. The monthly pay doesn’t account for that while the yearly one does. There are jobs also that have a variable salary depending on performance.
Because that’s the standard and that is the wage I negotiated and my bi-weekly checks are that number/26. I didn’t negotiate a per-payperiod rate.
It’s what my taxation is based on.
It’s what all my credit applications ask for.
Also, what you make and what you take home are really quite variable based on circumstance between 2 people making the same base wage. Retirement contributions, health care premiums, taxes, and other deductions vary from person to person.
For salaried employees it’s the standard metric by which wages are measured. You don’t need to guess anything. That’s the standard.
For hourly employees, that would be your hourly rate. Since hours can be variable and overtime is a thing your yearly rate would be variable too.
Seriously there’s nothing to guess.
Because that’s the standard
Where?
It’s not standard for me. We only talk about monthly numbers with my colleagues and friends.
Very few people are paid twice a week.
In Spain it is also yearly. In general the annual salary is divided in 14 payments, unless you ask to have it divided by 12, depends on the employer, so it makes sense.
The income tax is also annual based. So depending how much you earned during the fiscal year you have a different tax rate. (And part of the income tax rate is dependent on the “state” but they are all more or less similar).
In Québec, the default frequency for being paid is every two weeks. Big salaries are mostly stated as yearly salary, while more menial labour is often by the hour.
I don’t have an explanation, it’s just what it is. But I heard over that being paid every two weeks was because people were so bad with money that they would starve every month, so they started paying us every 2 weeks instead. Go figure.
Two weeks (or weekly) is very common for people on hourly wages in most countries. Particularly those with overtime rules. It gets a bit confusing if you have a bi monthly pay and say overtime rate for any hours over 40 hour weeks. Your checks land on 14 to 15.5 days per monthly but your overtime may need to be calculated based on hours of a previous pay period.
I mean, you just basically answered your own question. People get paid hourly, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, and some even per sale (ie. Realtors) so the only way to have a constant measurement is yearly.
Why not monthly? It seems the smallest unit to encompass them all, and is fairly standard.
Monthly makes sense also since most bills are monthly.
At every job I’ve ever had, I get paid every two weeks. So the amount I make per month varies.
Those months where three paychecks fall in them are pretty sweet.
But most pays are fortnightly
Not here (the Netherlands), everything is monthly, both pay and bills.
Same in Hungary. Not a single person I know gets their salary weekly or biweekly. It’s absolutely not a thing.
Also, your bills are monthly. You mortgage is monthly. Your credit card bill is monthly. Preschool is paid monthly. Everything is monthly.
I get paid 4 weekly so get 13 pays a year.
Most bills are monthly, most paychecks schedules are bi-weekly. To me this is the same issue as hot dogs and buns being sold in different quantities. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!
Biweekly isn’t a thing in many places in Europe, I think.
Until you have people who get a yearly bonus. Or 13 or 14 monthly salaries a year, which is quite common in Germany (basically a bonus, but the employee is entitled to it).
Yes but a lot of work is seasonal and/or sporadic. Annual pay smoothes it out.
I’d imagine that for some jobs (seasonal etc) there is too much variation in a month-to-month basis
I don’t get paid once a month. I get paid every 2 weeks.
At a prior job, I got paid every week.
Yearly is a good baseline, and also helpful for taxes (which Americans have to do by hand because of tax preparers lobbying against the government doing it for us).
maybe tax related since taxes are based on annual income. if you are not hourly/salaried and you are self employed/freelance/contract your income will vary from month to month. annually seems like it can be more accurate across all those groups
