Ok, I see your point. In the US, the rule of thumb seems to be that employer cost is about 1.3 what the employee gets. So using your quora example, if the emp

Ok, I see your point. In the US, the rule of thumb seems to be that employer cost is about 1.3 what the employee gets. So using your quora example, if the employee got 265k (165k after all taxes) , it cost the employer 345kusd. In France, the same 345kusd will turn into 172kusd for the employee, and after income tax, assuming single, no children, will become 120kusd. Basically, for the employee to land the extra 45k (and match the us salary) , the employer will have to pay an extra 140kusd. Now, this is a factor, but maybe not enough. I'll speculate that it's a combination of : - lower cost of living in some parts of Europe (housing in the bay area vs German cities say) means less demand for for higher salaries. It's worth noting that gafas wanting to lower wages for remote workers seem to imply exactly this. - some things are already paid for by your taxes (university, unemployment insurance, health, retirement, public transportation, etc), which will tend to keep wages lower as well because you don't need to take the money from your post income tax salary. This is why where your tax money goes matters. If tax money went entirely, say, to a pelican conservancy associations or waging war instead of all of the above , I would definitely want to be paid better. - productivity questions aside, more vacation time so employer wants to pay less - people commute, but very few people leave their country (language, culture, etc). Germany is a rich country, it's not obvious that your life will be spectacularly better in Switzerland (it might be though!). Sure, Switzerland has very high wages, but cost of life is very high, hence the commute. I will also venture a cultural aspect, which is purely speculative and based on my observations : Americans tend to move a lot more than Europeans.