alt Hacker News> Edit: I just checked and the average German nurse salary is (43k in USD vs 88k USD) less than half the average US RN salary,
Where did you get this figure?
23.70€/h (~27.60 USD/h) apparently is the average wage for nurses. Working full-time, 38 hours per week, that's 46,831.2€ (54,492.34 USD) per year. Mind you, half of socialized costs, like health insurance is payed by the employer, so you need to adjust figures accordingly. It's of course a totally ridiculous comparison without adjusting for living costs, etc.. Also typically there are 5-6 weeks of paid vacation per year.
https://www.allgaeuer-zeitung.de/pflege/durchschnittsgehalt-...
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That's below the median income, so not a lot for trained personnel.
Everything else you say is correct, but it applies to all German workers. In that sense, it's a somewhat low-paid job. It feels to me like they're more deserving of their income than a keyboard jockey like me.
> Where did you get this figure?
https://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Registered_Nurse_(R...
I am happy to accept your figure of "slightly more than half" for the sake of this discussion.
> Mind you, half of socialized costs, like health insurance is payed by the employer, so you need to adjust figures accordingly.
Nurses in the US also have half (or more) of costs like health insurance paid for by their employer - in that particular case, almost always much more than half. Half of Social Security retirement tax is paid for by the employer, but additional retirement payments beyond Social Security are usually much less than half. We can probably safely call this a wash.
> It's of course a totally ridiculous comparison without adjusting for living costs, etc..
Germany has overall notoriously high living costs. For instance, the electric rate my German friend is paying in east Germany is 4x(!!!![1]) my rate in the US, and she and her husband pay much more for a small apartment than I do a large house. On top of this, German housing often comes ludicrously unfurnished - most Americans would be surprised to learn that renters are often expected to provide their own kitchen. Germany certainly does not win out on housing costs.
Nurses are underpaid. Pay nurses more.
[1] I used to be baffled as to why Germans typically have no AC, only small appliances, often no clothesdryer, etc. Then after learning this I realized that for an average person, running American-style appliances would be totally unaffordable. Even lower class Americans will happily blow hundreds of dollars keeping their house at 60F in 95F degree heat while cooking in their electric oven and running their electric clothesdryer. While this results in "high" bills around $400 here, that'd be $1600 in Germany. You couldn't live like an American there. Even my personal "high" bills which sometimes approach $200 would cause me to cut back severely - $800 would be way too much.