For comparison, a similar position in Germany entry level salary would be between 50k and 60k Euro (hired lecturer, aka 13-I) and an entry level base salary for a tenure track professor is between 70k (W2) and 85k (W3) (but they usually have to buy private insurance). If that's good or bad depends on your field...in CS it's not so great, in less employable areas it's good.
I'd consider 60k solid middle class (not lower end of the spectrum).
Germany does not have the egregious housing costs of Berkeley. It’s entirely possible to feed one’s self on that amount but not really get adequate housing, and certainly not what you’d imagine as middle class stability.
True, just posted it as a data point. The salary from the article is for 9 month and mine are for 12 months so for 12 month the salary from the article would technically even be 142k. But I get her point of this actually being a 12 month job so I'll assume 107k.
That being said, I quickly googled the average rent in Berkley and it's around 4k$.
The salary difference (ignoring 9 vs 12 month) seems to be around 50k which is over 4k/month...which should be enough to cover average housing all else being equal. And that assumes no rent for the German counterpart :P
Also depends a bit where you are in Germany. I think in Munich (most expensive) the buying price is around 10k€/square meter and Berkley city from quick googling seems to be around 12,5k$. Not sure around rent prices but I'm assuming they scale to buying prices.
I found the part about health insurance interesting as well. I would probably never willingly under-insure if I had that option (I do not).
4K/month is 45% of 107k/year gross salary, that’s not affordable. Not enough left over to save for the children’s future and for retirement. But she’s not the only income so their household income is probably fine, just lower than what she could be making in another kind of job.
She should have married her partner to be on their insurance, that’s what I did.
> The salary difference (ignoring 9 vs 12 month) seems to be around 50k which is over 4k/month...which should be enough to cover average housing all else being equal. And that assumes no rent for the German counterpart :P
Except that everything else is more expensive here because of these costs. Any service you can imagine, jack the prices up 50%+.
> In San Francisco, high rents have driven the government's "low income" threshold of $117,400 (£87,970) almost as high as the median income for a family of four in the area - $118,400 (£88,630).
You know something has gone haywire when "low income" and "median" incomes are basically the same amount.
That article literally refers to it as poverty line as well a bit further down. "Poverty line" isn't a thing, thing. It'll always require some math to localize.
Lower down it discusses the nationally averaged poverty line. At no point does it make any claims to a number for a SF specific localized poverty line. As you say, local values are going to be different, but the national number is far below the "low income" threshold set earlier in the article.
Are you sure? I see values of $1.7M or so for Berkley [1]. In Munich it's around 10k Euros per square metre. There are many properties with prices around the Berkley value [2], although flats will be cheaper.
Adjunct profs are not buying houses in Berkeley, they rent. It's a college town with the housing demand that comes with that. It's also less than a 10th the size of Munich.
You’re comparing germany the country with Berkeley, a small place in california.
Maybe it’s more appropriate to compare Munich, London, Paris, Amsterdam with Berkeley and see how lecturer salaries there compare with each other. hint: Berkeley adjunct has higher salary even compared to some tenured professors in comparable cities in Europe.
If you're comparing to expensive places to live, Switzerland pays academics well. Postdoc salaries are around 85-100k (CHF, which is about the same as USD these days). Many universities don't have much in the way of a pay ladder though (ETH maxes out at 3 years experience). Full professors can hit 250k+. A studio in Zurich is 1500+/mo though which is comparable to central London, but competition is fiercer.
In the UK an experienced postdoc, or one with a competing offer, can make around 40k before having to push for lectureships. Professorial salaries start at 60k and maybe hit six figures for senior staff. Munich is fairly high, I think between 50-70k depending on who you ask (TV-L E13). Scandinavia is not great compared to the high cost of living, last time I checked.
Yes exactly, when I saw $100k I thought that sounded pretty good for an academic salary basically anywhere else except Switzerland.
A better comparison is somewhere like Oxford/Cambridge which both have extremely high rent/income ratios - some of the worst in the country - many postdocs, and almost all PhDs, can't afford to live alone. A room is close to 1k a month which is absurd in the UK.
And yes by all means compare Berkeley to Munich or Berlin or any of those cities other than London, where despite being expensive for Europe they don’t come close to Berkeley in terms of cost
I'd consider 60k solid middle class (not lower end of the spectrum).