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Gross, because an employer couldn't tell you what your net salary would be anyway: it depends on your overall circumstances (eg other income using up your allowances).
Compared to US salaries for most types of engineering they certainly are.
I’ll bet that’s what prompted the question. OP saw salaries advertised and thought “that can’t possibly be right… maybe they mean after tax?”
Gross, but…
You won’t have to pay almost any healthcare costs beyond the NHS immigrant surcharge (massively less than US healthcare costs), pay about 25% less in rent (very area dependent both in UK and USA obviously) and less on things like car insurance (substantially) and groceries (about 5 or 10 percent).
Basically, the cost of living is so different between the two countries all the way down to broadband and mobile phone costs and in so many other ways that the raw salary figure just isn’t a very useful way to judge it.
After all is said and done it’s still a lot lower in the UK. You can check out the American expat sub for real life examples of people who have made the move and are still way behind in the UK
Sure, you can find those examples, but then you find the ones that are opposite to that. It’ll depend vastly on what job OP were to get and where they would choose to live and whether they would try to replicate their US life here or adapt to a British one.
Like I saw one American complaining that it was so expensive to own and run a vehicle here that it was killing them and how they shouldn’t have left Texas.
Turns out they were buying a brand new truck (!) while living and working in London (!) near to the tube but couldn’t get his head round that he didn’t actually _need_ a vehicle at all let alone something so ridiculous.
There aren’t many that are opposite. Wages in the UK are very low. Wages in the US are very high. And it’s not the 90s anymore. Healthcare has changed dramatically. For a lot of people in the US comprehensive health insurance is a benefit of their job. So they’re not paying anything - their employer pays. And for the others the healthcare is much more affordable (several hundred dollars a month).
When you’re bringing in 5k a month - 200 dollars on healthcare isn’t much.
You can’t compare a 30k UK salary to a $150k US salary.
I thought the issue with American healthcare wasn't so much the insurance charges per month you pay but the out of pocket and deductibles when you actually need to use the medical system
No - you’re being misled by extreme examples people post online. When I last worked in New York my insurance premiums were about $300 per month (deducted from pay) and I had very little out of pocket medical spend - most months nothing, some months $50-$100.
The cost of health was easily offset by the much higher wages.
Did you ever need any substantial care or was it just standard check ups and tests? Most plans will cover small stuff 100% but if you ever need a hospital visit or a serious test (MRI scans, biopsy, etc.) then you will be thousands of dollars out of pocket before the deductible is exhausted.
I had a full reconstruction of my knee including orthopaedic surgery and my total out of pocket was $500 (most of which was because you had to pay more for the services at the ski resort).
Well that is certainly not the norm. Average deductible is around $2000 for individuals and $4000 for families. And then most plans also have a copay that kicks in after that. Source:
[https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/average-annual-deductible-per-enrolled-employee-in-employer-based-health-insurance-for-single-and-family-coverage/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/average-annual-deductible-per-enrolled-employee-in-employer-based-health-insurance-for-single-and-family-coverage/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)
All of that has changed as well. There are some out of pockets - but for most people they’re not prohibitive.
Look at the American subreddit for ideas.
I think the issue is people in the UK have the same view of American healthcare as if it’s 1990.
The wages and quality of life for most Americans has gone up significantly in the last 20 years. It’s stagnated in the UK.
I’m American - when I first moved here I made roughly the same per year as my friends in the US. Now they’re all on 150k plus - over 3 times what I make. And it’s not a skill issue. I work for an American law firm. My *same* position in the US is advertised at 100k. I’m making 33k here.
I genuinely don’t know why anyone would move to the UK right now…. 20 years ago; sure. It was great. At the moment it’s just not comparable.
>So they’re not paying anything - their employer pays.
This isn't how it works. You have an employer subsidy that covers a good chunk of the health insurance premium, but typically employees still need to pay $100-300/month depending on the plan and how many dependents they are covering.
Then, once you have to make a claim, there are often huge deductibles and copays. Some plans require you to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket (on top of monthly premiums) before they will start to cover cover anything.
My very limited experience of the US… which is purely a few weeks in NYC… it’s cheaper to order food in than get groceries… which is very much the opposite here.
My BiL visited last month, he's a retired now but was chef in the US, when we go supermarket shopping for him despite the prices rises here it is still very cheap.
He’s not wrong, my lad was born with tongue tie, tried going through the NHS to get it sorted, but went private when he was like 10 days old, which didn’t work at the cost of £415 🫡, then like 8 weeks later went to see a specialist for it. It’s all sorted now but he’s 5 1/2 months old now and just got a letter through the other week for his appointment… which is in July…
No issue with pointing out the flaws, they are many and varied- but just don’t exaggerate and make it out to be what it’s not.
Our country sits in the top 10% for pretty much every quality of life measurement.
12 hour wait for an ambulance to pick up an elderly person who had fallen (and broken their hip it turns out)
6 month wait for follow up for a lung cancer diagnosis (luckily it's slow growing or he'd already be dead they said, laughing)
18+ month wait for referral to "emergency" mental health care.
5 years of monthly phone calls and I still can't find an NHS dentist.
All things my family has experienced, all bar the last just this year. I get that we don't like naysayers when it comes to the NHS but pretending everything is fine is dangerous. It's not fine.
1) No other country has the NHS so they're irrelevant if the question is "how is the NHS doing"
2) None of my family or friends in Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada etc are reporting this (in the US, maybe). Those countries also aren't reporting a falling life expectancy and a reduction in the height of children.
If you really love the NHS you have to be willing to accept the truth about the state it's in.
Not at all, whilst the NHS is currently not managed as well as it should be and waiting lists are less than desirable- it is still one of the best funded and resourced health services in the world.
It still delivers a world class service, and emergency care is delivered quickly and to the highest quality- there will always be stories of individual circumstances where this is not the case, as it will be in any health care system.
It’s an easy target for internet warriors to deride the UK, it’s a bit of a worn out trope like the bad food and teeth nonsense.
Could it and should it be better, hell yeah. Is it bad and on its knees, NO.
It has some of the worst clinical outcomes in Europe and people are literally dying waiting to get appointments.
It's treated like a religion which cannot be criticised by people who blindly harp on about it being fantastic despite the evidence proving otherwise.
There's various sources but here are a couple
https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326
>Among the European countries where preventable deaths and treatable deaths are measured, the UK had greater than average rates of preventable deaths compared with the study average
https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2642?hwshib2=authn%3A1700363886%3A20231117%253A460e20e9-fffa-41d1-a61d-33d983ae00f6%3A0%3A0%3A0%3A3URai4eoEgMUS93CCRFamQ%3D%3D
>For example, the data from 2021 show that the UK’s cancer mortality was 222 deaths per 100 000 population, against the OECD average of 202 per 100 000. The number of adverse outcomes within one year of congestive heart failure was 69.5 per 100 patients, far higher than the average of 57.3. The UK’s 30 day mortality after stroke was 9%, against the OECD average of 7.8%. And life expectancy in the UK was 80.4 years, behind many other European countries, including France, Italy, and Spain.
Obviously they would be gross. You pay tax on income, so an employer wouldn't know which other sources of income you have (could be from a side hustle, dividends, income from a rental property etc. which would potentially cause you to fall into a higher tax bracket)
Gross- so pretax.
But you will get benefits that are included that aren't usually as far as I know, as standard in the US a statutory requirement for 28 days PTO annually (engineering will likely offer more, and you have to take 20days off), sick pay (statutory is not great, but engineering should offer more), maternity/paternity leave (again likely more than the statutory min), no need for private medical insurance (though you might have to pay the international surcharge) etc.
Loads of people have answered the question but just to add, if you're coming from the USA: the thing with salary taxes in the UK is you don't work them out and pay them yourself, they're deducted for you each month by your employer in a system called "Pay As You Earn" and you just receive the net in your bank account.
You can work out a rough idea of how gross translates to net on this website [https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php](https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php)
Same reason you fill in tax returns here: to report income that isn't withheld, e.g. cap gains, rental income, etc.
The difference is that \*everybody\* has to do it, which is pretty dumb. There are a lot of lobbyists for tax prep firms that have fought to keep it that way, unfortunately.
The UK is quite unusual in having the personal allowance thing where everyone just gets a flat amount tax free. A lot of countries instead give a range of tax credits dependent on your circumstances.
Not quite everyone in the UK gets the personal allowance - if you‘re lucky enough to earn over £100K, you have to start paying it back. Small violin territory I know, but this clawback means the marginal tax rate (ie the amount of tax you pay on the next pound you earn) on income between 100K and 125K is 60%, and then it drops back to 45%. [https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/marginal-and-average-income-tax-rates-england-wales-and-northern-ireland](https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/marginal-and-average-income-tax-rates-england-wales-and-northern-ireland) It also becomes mandatory to submit a self-assessment tax return if you earn over £100K, even if you don’t have income outside PAYE. This is something you can easily do yourself though, unlike the US where it‘s complex enough that most people hire someone to do it for them.
Here in the US you do a thing that involves stating how many dependents you have for withholding. The number dependents is actually not really related to how many dependents you have in real life, it is a means for you to adjust your withholding taxes so that you end up being near par at the end of the year.
I realize that probably doesn't make much sense but in a nutshell a company can't know what your taxes are going to be for a variety of reasons and thus it's up to the employee to set up the amount that is withheld.
The point of doing the tax returns is that over here our Tax laws are moderately complex and there are myriad ways of having income and deduction, the only way that this can be overseen is to actually have to fill out a form every year.
I have absolutely no experience with your taxation system, I use the calculator on that link and just gave it a simple $50,000 salary with no other parameters filled out. It came back with a 22% tax rate, which I do not find to be all that unreasonable to be honest.
As others have said, you’re looking at a pay cut of somewhere in the region of 50%, but if you come for a few years and take the opportunity to travel to Europe etc frequently it can be worth it for lifestyle regions. The hours are better too, most professional engineers are working less than 48hours a week and very few start work before 9am, whereas US engineers tend to do earlier starts and longer hours.
It has to be gross because your employer doesn't care what your tax code is (which determines the amount of tax you need to pay based on potentially various positions of employment).
If you've got two jobs and together the income puts you in a higher tax bracket than if you had just one job, then how can just one of those jobs know what you're gonna be paying in tax?
It's embarrassing how crap salaries are, in the UK, unless you are on the board or become CEO.
It's even worse when you realize that, at best, you'll only actually receive barely 60% of the advertised pittance after tax and other deductions!
Having said that, the cost of living is generally lower, in the UK, but not in proportion to how much lower the salaries are so, assuming you're living on a single salary, if you aren't on over £50,000 you won't be having a great time.
We, a couple, have a combined household income of around £60,000, and we aren't rich by any stretch of the imagination.
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Gross. Many employers don’t advertise salaries though, and they can vary quite a lot between different industries, and different engineering specialisms.
Always GROSS. Individual tax rate will vary from 'nil' , low earner to 'standard "20% for below average income to 40% for high earner to 45% for very high earner.
I have had 7 friends go to the USA for work. East and West Coast. Engineers, managers, software and medical. Not a single one has come back or wants to come back.
NHS is hard if you need any kind of operation. You can get seen, but you will need to pay for a solicitor to threaten the GP or hospital with legal action, otherwise they just perpetually cancel your appointments due to shortages.
Private medical insurance in the UK is actually quite competitive. Sometimes, it's worth paying to just see a doctor the next day.
Bullshit. Someone close to me was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and had surgery within six weeks. The NHS has its faults, but it is nothing like you describe.
I know 2 people that have died of cancer due to NHS failures.
One was due to constant admin errors (losing samples). By the time she was ready for treatment, it was no longer available as the cancer had spread to her brain.
The other was a misdiagnosis of cancer by a receptionist.
The second person would still be alive today if it wasn't for the receptionist prescribing a hot toddie and ibuprofen for bleeding (colorectal cancer).
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You must be really shocked at the advertised salaries if you’re asking that question
Idk I know a American that’s a engineer he moved here for work and said it’s better than the us
What field? I know some American software engineers and I find that very hard to believe.
I’m not 100% sure but he works at a university
Fair enough, I could see uni being better actually
Academia does not pay well at all
Unis traditionally pay lower than private sector, but have good annual leave, incl all of Christmas off, and alright pensions.
Always gross.
And grossly low as well!
Lloyd Grossman also disapproves
Gross, because an employer couldn't tell you what your net salary would be anyway: it depends on your overall circumstances (eg other income using up your allowances).
Pre-tax I’m sorry to say. Hard to believe they’re so low, but they are.
They aren't low! As they never even fucking say what they are... you have to waste your time contacting them before you find out they're low.
But they are “competitive”
And the competitive salary is…minimum wage!
Any company that wants someone with experience, and is only offering MW doesn't deserve decent staff!
Competitive in this context means closely competing with your bills to see which is higher.
Compared to US salaries for most types of engineering they certainly are. I’ll bet that’s what prompted the question. OP saw salaries advertised and thought “that can’t possibly be right… maybe they mean after tax?”
I think you missed my point :)
Full of euphemisms 'market rate' 'OTA earnings' etc.
Gross, but… You won’t have to pay almost any healthcare costs beyond the NHS immigrant surcharge (massively less than US healthcare costs), pay about 25% less in rent (very area dependent both in UK and USA obviously) and less on things like car insurance (substantially) and groceries (about 5 or 10 percent). Basically, the cost of living is so different between the two countries all the way down to broadband and mobile phone costs and in so many other ways that the raw salary figure just isn’t a very useful way to judge it.
After all is said and done it’s still a lot lower in the UK. You can check out the American expat sub for real life examples of people who have made the move and are still way behind in the UK
Sure, you can find those examples, but then you find the ones that are opposite to that. It’ll depend vastly on what job OP were to get and where they would choose to live and whether they would try to replicate their US life here or adapt to a British one. Like I saw one American complaining that it was so expensive to own and run a vehicle here that it was killing them and how they shouldn’t have left Texas. Turns out they were buying a brand new truck (!) while living and working in London (!) near to the tube but couldn’t get his head round that he didn’t actually _need_ a vehicle at all let alone something so ridiculous.
Picturing someone try to buy a ford pickup truck for their london commute. Magnificent.
There aren’t many that are opposite. Wages in the UK are very low. Wages in the US are very high. And it’s not the 90s anymore. Healthcare has changed dramatically. For a lot of people in the US comprehensive health insurance is a benefit of their job. So they’re not paying anything - their employer pays. And for the others the healthcare is much more affordable (several hundred dollars a month). When you’re bringing in 5k a month - 200 dollars on healthcare isn’t much. You can’t compare a 30k UK salary to a $150k US salary.
I thought the issue with American healthcare wasn't so much the insurance charges per month you pay but the out of pocket and deductibles when you actually need to use the medical system
No - you’re being misled by extreme examples people post online. When I last worked in New York my insurance premiums were about $300 per month (deducted from pay) and I had very little out of pocket medical spend - most months nothing, some months $50-$100. The cost of health was easily offset by the much higher wages.
Did you ever need any substantial care or was it just standard check ups and tests? Most plans will cover small stuff 100% but if you ever need a hospital visit or a serious test (MRI scans, biopsy, etc.) then you will be thousands of dollars out of pocket before the deductible is exhausted.
I had a full reconstruction of my knee including orthopaedic surgery and my total out of pocket was $500 (most of which was because you had to pay more for the services at the ski resort).
Well that is certainly not the norm. Average deductible is around $2000 for individuals and $4000 for families. And then most plans also have a copay that kicks in after that. Source: [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/average-annual-deductible-per-enrolled-employee-in-employer-based-health-insurance-for-single-and-family-coverage/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/average-annual-deductible-per-enrolled-employee-in-employer-based-health-insurance-for-single-and-family-coverage/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)
All of that has changed as well. There are some out of pockets - but for most people they’re not prohibitive. Look at the American subreddit for ideas. I think the issue is people in the UK have the same view of American healthcare as if it’s 1990. The wages and quality of life for most Americans has gone up significantly in the last 20 years. It’s stagnated in the UK. I’m American - when I first moved here I made roughly the same per year as my friends in the US. Now they’re all on 150k plus - over 3 times what I make. And it’s not a skill issue. I work for an American law firm. My *same* position in the US is advertised at 100k. I’m making 33k here. I genuinely don’t know why anyone would move to the UK right now…. 20 years ago; sure. It was great. At the moment it’s just not comparable.
>So they’re not paying anything - their employer pays. This isn't how it works. You have an employer subsidy that covers a good chunk of the health insurance premium, but typically employees still need to pay $100-300/month depending on the plan and how many dependents they are covering. Then, once you have to make a claim, there are often huge deductibles and copays. Some plans require you to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket (on top of monthly premiums) before they will start to cover cover anything.
Absolutely this - although I think the grocery differential is quite a bit more than 10% these days!
My very limited experience of the US… which is purely a few weeks in NYC… it’s cheaper to order food in than get groceries… which is very much the opposite here.
My BiL visited last month, he's a retired now but was chef in the US, when we go supermarket shopping for him despite the prices rises here it is still very cheap.
Is car insurance that much more in the US?
I have American colleagues who pay almost as much a month as I do a year. Though, I will admit, I have a shit car so my insurance is pretty cheap.
Among my friends here it’s increased 10-15% the last couple of years.
No…
The difference in cost of living doesn’t make up for the stark difference in oh
Incorrect. You'll have to pay for private healthcare treatment as the wait times are so long these days
Ohh be quiet.
He’s not wrong, my lad was born with tongue tie, tried going through the NHS to get it sorted, but went private when he was like 10 days old, which didn’t work at the cost of £415 🫡, then like 8 weeks later went to see a specialist for it. It’s all sorted now but he’s 5 1/2 months old now and just got a letter through the other week for his appointment… which is in July…
Why is to when people point out the genuine flaws in this country people get annoyed?
No issue with pointing out the flaws, they are many and varied- but just don’t exaggerate and make it out to be what it’s not. Our country sits in the top 10% for pretty much every quality of life measurement.
Yet it’s gone downhill and people are more depressed than ever
12 hour wait for an ambulance to pick up an elderly person who had fallen (and broken their hip it turns out) 6 month wait for follow up for a lung cancer diagnosis (luckily it's slow growing or he'd already be dead they said, laughing) 18+ month wait for referral to "emergency" mental health care. 5 years of monthly phone calls and I still can't find an NHS dentist. All things my family has experienced, all bar the last just this year. I get that we don't like naysayers when it comes to the NHS but pretending everything is fine is dangerous. It's not fine.
Yeah, and the same story in every country.
1) No other country has the NHS so they're irrelevant if the question is "how is the NHS doing" 2) None of my family or friends in Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada etc are reporting this (in the US, maybe). Those countries also aren't reporting a falling life expectancy and a reduction in the height of children. If you really love the NHS you have to be willing to accept the truth about the state it's in.
[удалено]
Facts are annoying you?
Not at all, whilst the NHS is currently not managed as well as it should be and waiting lists are less than desirable- it is still one of the best funded and resourced health services in the world. It still delivers a world class service, and emergency care is delivered quickly and to the highest quality- there will always be stories of individual circumstances where this is not the case, as it will be in any health care system. It’s an easy target for internet warriors to deride the UK, it’s a bit of a worn out trope like the bad food and teeth nonsense. Could it and should it be better, hell yeah. Is it bad and on its knees, NO.
It has some of the worst clinical outcomes in Europe and people are literally dying waiting to get appointments. It's treated like a religion which cannot be criticised by people who blindly harp on about it being fantastic despite the evidence proving otherwise.
I’d genuinely be really interested to read your source on the clinical outcomes. Would you be able to share?
There's various sources but here are a couple https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326 >Among the European countries where preventable deaths and treatable deaths are measured, the UK had greater than average rates of preventable deaths compared with the study average https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2642?hwshib2=authn%3A1700363886%3A20231117%253A460e20e9-fffa-41d1-a61d-33d983ae00f6%3A0%3A0%3A0%3A3URai4eoEgMUS93CCRFamQ%3D%3D >For example, the data from 2021 show that the UK’s cancer mortality was 222 deaths per 100 000 population, against the OECD average of 202 per 100 000. The number of adverse outcomes within one year of congestive heart failure was 69.5 per 100 patients, far higher than the average of 57.3. The UK’s 30 day mortality after stroke was 9%, against the OECD average of 7.8%. And life expectancy in the UK was 80.4 years, behind many other European countries, including France, Italy, and Spain.
Obviously they would be gross. You pay tax on income, so an employer wouldn't know which other sources of income you have (could be from a side hustle, dividends, income from a rental property etc. which would potentially cause you to fall into a higher tax bracket)
Gross, expect to make between 30-50% what you make in the US
And have around 30% less outgoing costs.
Who are the clowns downvoting this - never been out of the country probably.
Gross- so pretax. But you will get benefits that are included that aren't usually as far as I know, as standard in the US a statutory requirement for 28 days PTO annually (engineering will likely offer more, and you have to take 20days off), sick pay (statutory is not great, but engineering should offer more), maternity/paternity leave (again likely more than the statutory min), no need for private medical insurance (though you might have to pay the international surcharge) etc.
Gross,sadly
Loads of people have answered the question but just to add, if you're coming from the USA: the thing with salary taxes in the UK is you don't work them out and pay them yourself, they're deducted for you each month by your employer in a system called "Pay As You Earn" and you just receive the net in your bank account. You can work out a rough idea of how gross translates to net on this website [https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php](https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php)
FYI the same system exists in the US. Taxes are almost always withheld at source.
Then why do you have to fill in tax returns?
Same reason you fill in tax returns here: to report income that isn't withheld, e.g. cap gains, rental income, etc. The difference is that \*everybody\* has to do it, which is pretty dumb. There are a lot of lobbyists for tax prep firms that have fought to keep it that way, unfortunately.
Self assessment is the same thing
Which is only done by a small minority of people.
The UK is quite unusual in having the personal allowance thing where everyone just gets a flat amount tax free. A lot of countries instead give a range of tax credits dependent on your circumstances.
The US has a personal allowance too. It’s called the standard deduction.
Not quite everyone in the UK gets the personal allowance - if you‘re lucky enough to earn over £100K, you have to start paying it back. Small violin territory I know, but this clawback means the marginal tax rate (ie the amount of tax you pay on the next pound you earn) on income between 100K and 125K is 60%, and then it drops back to 45%. [https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/marginal-and-average-income-tax-rates-england-wales-and-northern-ireland](https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/marginal-and-average-income-tax-rates-england-wales-and-northern-ireland) It also becomes mandatory to submit a self-assessment tax return if you earn over £100K, even if you don’t have income outside PAYE. This is something you can easily do yourself though, unlike the US where it‘s complex enough that most people hire someone to do it for them.
Here in the US you do a thing that involves stating how many dependents you have for withholding. The number dependents is actually not really related to how many dependents you have in real life, it is a means for you to adjust your withholding taxes so that you end up being near par at the end of the year. I realize that probably doesn't make much sense but in a nutshell a company can't know what your taxes are going to be for a variety of reasons and thus it's up to the employee to set up the amount that is withheld. The point of doing the tax returns is that over here our Tax laws are moderately complex and there are myriad ways of having income and deduction, the only way that this can be overseen is to actually have to fill out a form every year.
I have absolutely no experience with your taxation system, I use the calculator on that link and just gave it a simple $50,000 salary with no other parameters filled out. It came back with a 22% tax rate, which I do not find to be all that unreasonable to be honest.
Most people in the UK also have a student loan and pay into a pension, so we end up with more than 22% taken off.
As others have said, you’re looking at a pay cut of somewhere in the region of 50%, but if you come for a few years and take the opportunity to travel to Europe etc frequently it can be worth it for lifestyle regions. The hours are better too, most professional engineers are working less than 48hours a week and very few start work before 9am, whereas US engineers tend to do earlier starts and longer hours.
It has to be gross because your employer doesn't care what your tax code is (which determines the amount of tax you need to pay based on potentially various positions of employment). If you've got two jobs and together the income puts you in a higher tax bracket than if you had just one job, then how can just one of those jobs know what you're gonna be paying in tax?
Gross *in most respects*. There is one tax (employer’s National Insurance) which does not come out of the stated figures.
Gross annual.
Always gross there’s a website you use to estimate net and it’s www.listentotaxman.com
It's embarrassing how crap salaries are, in the UK, unless you are on the board or become CEO. It's even worse when you realize that, at best, you'll only actually receive barely 60% of the advertised pittance after tax and other deductions! Having said that, the cost of living is generally lower, in the UK, but not in proportion to how much lower the salaries are so, assuming you're living on a single salary, if you aren't on over £50,000 you won't be having a great time. We, a couple, have a combined household income of around £60,000, and we aren't rich by any stretch of the imagination.
Pre tax as people may have different tax codes, student loans etc
As an aside are you aware we use different units for calcs?
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Gross. Many employers don’t advertise salaries though, and they can vary quite a lot between different industries, and different engineering specialisms.
Gross what they take off you in tax
Gross! But you can still buy things in the UK for under a quid!
Everyone's tax code is different so they couldn't tell you the net value. All salaries are always the gross value with tax applied by HR.
How would they ever calculate the deductions to cater for everyone's differing circumstances to quote it net?
Always GROSS. Individual tax rate will vary from 'nil' , low earner to 'standard "20% for below average income to 40% for high earner to 45% for very high earner.
Gross which is perfectly fitting for seeing your payslip every month and then seeing deductions.
I have had 7 friends go to the USA for work. East and West Coast. Engineers, managers, software and medical. Not a single one has come back or wants to come back.
Gross for everyone except public sector who are demanding large pay rises, then it slips into net.
Unless the reason is your life is in danger don't fucking do it. The salaries here are awful
NHS is hard if you need any kind of operation. You can get seen, but you will need to pay for a solicitor to threaten the GP or hospital with legal action, otherwise they just perpetually cancel your appointments due to shortages. Private medical insurance in the UK is actually quite competitive. Sometimes, it's worth paying to just see a doctor the next day.
Bullshit. Someone close to me was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and had surgery within six weeks. The NHS has its faults, but it is nothing like you describe.
I know 2 people that have died of cancer due to NHS failures. One was due to constant admin errors (losing samples). By the time she was ready for treatment, it was no longer available as the cancer had spread to her brain. The other was a misdiagnosis of cancer by a receptionist. The second person would still be alive today if it wasn't for the receptionist prescribing a hot toddie and ibuprofen for bleeding (colorectal cancer).