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?
Lol who would hear “I’m making 50k” and think it’s anything other than per year unless they just stepped out of a private jet…
I feel like this might be confusing only if you are under the age of 14 and have no idea how money or the world works…
Depends on the currency.
Did you just assume my ¥der?
That was funnier than it should have been
The exchange rate is pretty good right now.
Not in basically all of the English speaking world. USD, CAD, AUS, Pounds, Euros, NZD. 50k a month or week or whatever you for some reason think it might be other than a year would be an insane amount of money to make.
I bet you’re the kind of person that hates it when you ask the time and people respond by rounding it to the nearest 10 minutes…
Not really. It’s usually obvious from context. Unless you’re trying to be an intentionally obtuse pedant?
I know people who make 50k per month and don’t have jets. I make 30k p/m but I’ll get there one day. It’s crazy how when I was broke making $20/hour in a cafe that I thought everyone or most people are broke but now I’m making modest money it’s crazy how many other entrepreneurs are in my circle now. Just wow.
Lol this piss take xD
I mean, you just basically answered your own question. People get paid hourly, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, and some even per sale (ie. Realtors) so the only way to have a constant measurement is yearly.
Why not monthly? It seems the smallest unit to encompass them all, and is fairly standard.
Monthly makes sense also since most bills are monthly.
Until you have people who get a yearly bonus. Or 13 or 14 monthly salaries a year, which is quite common in Germany (basically a bonus, but the employee is entitled to it).
Yes but a lot of work is seasonal and/or sporadic. Annual pay smoothes it out.
Most bills are monthly, most paychecks schedules are bi-weekly. To me this is the same issue as hot dogs and buns being sold in different quantities. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!
I think most answered your question with one exception. Dollars? What else you expect it in? Cats?
(Ignoring you will want it in the country of your residence)
In France, people are sometimes paid 13/14 months a year. It means you get two months as a bonus, so it’s relevant in this case to tell the yearly salary
True, and funnily enough french people don’t use yearly gross. Most of the time they use monthly net, and, in the context of salary negotiations, will specify over how many months. E.g. “2000 net sur 13 mois”
Because that’s the standard and that is the wage I negotiated and my bi-weekly checks are that number/26. I didn’t negotiate a per-payperiod rate.
It’s what my taxation is based on.
It’s what all my credit applications ask for.
Also, what you make and what you take home are really quite variable based on circumstance between 2 people making the same base wage. Retirement contributions, health care premiums, taxes, and other deductions vary from person to person.
For salaried employees it’s the standard metric by which wages are measured. You don’t need to guess anything. That’s the standard.
For hourly employees, that would be your hourly rate. Since hours can be variable and overtime is a thing your yearly rate would be variable too.
Seriously there’s nothing to guess.
Because that’s the standard
Where?
It’s not standard for me. We only talk about monthly numbers with my colleagues and friends.
For the US, but going by this thread it’s not limited to here.
Also, for what it’s worth, I would think if op was in a place that used monthly as the standard they wouldn’t have posted this complaint. If that’s not the case I’m confused by the point of this post?
What’s up with yearly salaries not keeping up with inflation?
Because you only get a bonus once a year. You say your compensation is “$xxx with a $xx bonus”.
“I’m making 50k”. Great, now I have to guess - dollars? Monthly? Yearly? If yearly then what’s the monthly paycheck? Net? Gross?
I mean surely it’s obvious in that example, no?
dollars
If that’s the native currency wherever you are, then of course dollars
Monthly? Yearly?
$50k/month about be $600k/year. Pretty sure you’d be able to tell if the person you’re talking to made half a million dollars a year vs just above the poverty line (in the US at least) just from context, but when in doubt - it’s probably safe to assume that the person you’re talking to isnt in the top 1% of earners
If yearly then what’s the monthly paycheck?
Yearly divided by 12? If you’re in a hurry and want a rough estimate just chop a number off the right and that’ll get you to within ~10% of the correct value
Net? Gross?
I’ve literally never heard anyone give their salary as gross outside the context of financial planning, and even then they’ll always specify “after taxes” or something similar.
Other comments go into plenty of detail about why they se various conventions are what they are (yearly vs monthly, net vs gross, etc(
I’ve literally never heard anyone give their salary as gross outside the context of financial planning, and even then they’ll always specify “after taxes” or something similar.
You mean net here, not gross. Otherwise, agree.
Personally, I don’t get paid every month, I get paid every two weeks, which means that some months I get paid twice and some I get paid thrice. Stating an annual value corrects for weird shit like this, and it’s going to be consistent since it’s probably how it is being tracked in the employer’s accounting.
As others have mentioned, a few possibilities (I’m in the US, not sure how specific this is):
- Payment isn’t always monthly, it is often every two weeks. So sometimes you get two paychecks in a month, sometimes you get three.
- Compensation isn’t just salary, even if you’re salaried. Bonuses, stock grants, etc. might be done yearly/every 6 mo./every quarter.
- Expenses aren’t always monthly. If you own a place, you probably pay property tax which isn’t due every month AFAIK. If you budget for vacations, holiday travel, etc., these are costs that vary wildly month to month, but have some stability on a yearly basis.
- ETA: taxes are based on annual income, too.
Expenses aren’t always monthly
Mortgages neither. Mine is accelerated bi-weekly, meaning I pay essentially 13 months a year… It shaves a wooping 3 and a half years on my 25 years!
Can’t speak for the US, but here in Germany there often aren’t 12 monthly salaries to a year. Many people get a Christmas bonus and/or a summer bonus, but just as many don’t. Personally, I get paid about 13 1/4 monthly salaries a year, so telling you my yearly salary would be more accurate than the monthly amount.
In Québec, the default frequency for being paid is every two weeks. Big salaries are mostly stated as yearly salary, while more menial labour is often by the hour.
I don’t have an explanation, it’s just what it is. But I heard over that being paid every two weeks was because people were so bad with money that they would starve every month, so they started paying us every 2 weeks instead. Go figure.
Two weeks (or weekly) is very common for people on hourly wages in most countries. Particularly those with overtime rules. It gets a bit confusing if you have a bi monthly pay and say overtime rate for any hours over 40 hour weeks. Your checks land on 14 to 15.5 days per monthly but your overtime may need to be calculated based on hours of a previous pay period.
Yearly = professional job hourly = wage slave unskilled work
