Maximum salary transparency: StepStone and Gehalt.de publish Germany’s most comprehensive salary report

30 percent of employees in Germany do not know how much their spouse earns. Around eight out of ten have no idea what amount is on their colleagues' pay slips. The results of a recent StepStone study involving more than 5,000 participants show that salary is still a taboo subject in Germany.

Korbinian Nagel, salary expert at StepStone, says:

“We at StepStone want to change that and make the world of work more transparent and thus fairer, because salary negotiations on an equal footing are only possible if jobseekers know how much they can earn. That’s why we’re breaking with salary taboos and give jobseekers all the information they need. Companies also benefit from greater transparency and equity in the application process, because if it only becomes clear at the end that the expectations don’t match, both sides lose out.”

To give both parties guidance, StepStone and Gehalt.de have joined forces for the first time to publish Germany’s largest salary report. The report is based on data from 600,000 current salaries and offers a detailed overview of salary opportunities.

Key findings at a glance:

Profession ranking: Doctors earn the most

• The gross median salary in Germany is 44,100 euros.
• Doctors are by far the top earners at 78,300 euros, around 78 percent more than the average.
• They are followed by engineers (59,300 euros), IT professionals (57,000 euros), and management consultants (56,400 euros).

Sectors: Tech and finance far ahead, corporations pay particularly well

• Employees in the semiconductor industry (63,000 euros) and biotechnology (61,500 euros) are particularly high earners. Also in the top five is the pharmaceutical industry (56,200 euros).
• The key industries also pay well, with banks (58,300 euros) and the automotive industry (55,900 euros) offering median salaries that are around 30 percent above the average.
• The bigger the company, the higher the salary. While small employers with up to 50 employees pay a gross median salary of 37,400 euros, employees in large companies (> 5,000 employees) earn almost 60 percent more at 59,300 euros.

Regions: Salary levels in Hesse and Baden-Württemberg around 42 percent above the average

• Salary levels also depend on location. Hesse has the highest average median salary in Germany at 47,480 euros. Baden-Württemberg is in second place with 47,806 euros, followed by Bavaria (46,800 euros).
• Bringing up the rear are Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (33,600 euros), Brandenburg (34,300 euros), and Saxony-Anhalt (35,400 euros).
• The ranking of major cities is dominated by Frankfurt am Main with 54,100 euros, followed by Munich (53,900 euros) and Stuttgart (53,600 euros).

Academic qualifications and staff responsibility give a significant boost in salary

• Employees with management responsibility are rewarded with a significantly higher gross median salary (86,300 euros), which means they earn almost twice as much as employees without staff responsibility.
• University graduates earn 59,700 euros, 48 percent more than their colleagues without a degree (40,600 euros).
• Salary prospects increase as employees acquire professional experience. While new entrants earn a median salary of 33,800 euros, this increases to 52,000 euros after more than 11 years on the job.

Forecast: 2022 could be a big year for salary increases

• In the decade before the Covid-19 pandemic (2010 to 2019), salaries in Germany rose by an average of 2.4 percent. The current job boom will see wages rise sharply in the future.
• The minimum wage is likely to be raised by a total of almost 9 percent this year, with increasing labor shortages also driving up wages even further.
• StepStone salary expert Korbinian Nagel explains: “The right salary and salary transparency already decide whether jobseekers choose an employer or not. In the future, salary will become an even stronger strategic lever in the fight for the best employees. We expect salaries to increase by between 3 and 4.7 percent this year.”

The salary information in this press release has been rounded for better readability.

For more information and to download the complete Salary Report 2022, visit: https://www.stepstone.de/wissen/gehaltsreport-2022/

About Gehalt.de

Gehalt.de is a leading salary portal in German-speaking countries and has been part of the StepStone Group since 2019. The portal was founded in 1999 and since then has specialized in digital remuneration services for employers* and employees*. With a database of over 3.6 million salaries and a range of services, StepStone helps create greater transparency in the world of work.

About the StepStone Salary Report 2022
The Salary Report 2022 is more comprehensive and offers more salary information than ever before. StepStone and Gehalt.de, a subsidiary of StepStone,have combined their knowledge and their salary databases to produce the largest salary report in Germany, with salary information by location and region, professional field, sector, professional experience, and much more. Due to the changed database, the salaries differ greatly from the last report in 2021 and are therefore not comparable. This year, most of the salary figures are also reported as median salaries.

What is the median salary? And how does it differ from the average salary?
The average is calculated by adding up all values and then dividing by the number of data records. The average value can be influenced by extremely high or low values. A comparison with the median therefore helps to better classify the average value. The median is the value that lies exactly in the middle of all values. This means that the number of salaries that are lower and higher than the median salary is exactly the same.

About the database and methodology
Data for more than 600,000 salaries was evaluated for the StepStone Salary Report 2022. Sixty-four percent of this data came from men and 36 percent from women. The proportion of employees with staff responsibility is 13 percent. All data was collected over the past 12 months and checked by our compensation consultants.All salary data is given in euros. All salary figures refer to gross annual salary including bonuses, commission, etc. The data comes from the StepStone and Gehalt.de portals. The median salary is also given on the overview pages. The median is the value that lies exactly in the middle of all values. This means that the number of salaries that are lower and higher than the median salary is exactly the same. For more information on the methodology, visit www.stepstone.de/gehalt.

In the future, StepStone and Gehalt.de will merge their salary analyses under the StepStone brand.

About the StepStone survey on salaries and salary transparency in Germany
How satisfied are employees in Germany with their salary? How often do they ask for a salary increase? And how transparent are they when it comes to discussing salary? In January 2022, StepStone surveyed around 5,100 employees in Germany on these and other topics. Among them were around 1,100 executives.