this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
72 points (68.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43979 readers
634 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] foo@withachanceof.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because it's easier to compare yearly salaries. If you say โ€œIโ€™m making 50kโ€ then I can assume it's yearly (if it's monthly then good for you, but that's overwhelmingly not the case). Otherwise you need to specify the pay frequency and do math.

Same with net/gross. I can assume your yearly salary is given in gross because net introduces a bunch of variables with tax rates based on location/deductions that makes it a fairly meaningless value to compare against. Not to mention your net monthly income may change in a year as you hit certain tax limits like the max social security tax limit.

Some people may also not have consistent monthly earnings so averaging income over a year gives a more accurate picture of average income.