These careers do have decent insurance in the US. Long term illness is a different beast, but the most of ever pay for a medically necessary surgery is $3800, which is my max out of pocket. And I'd get short term disability which pays both 80% of my salary to me, and some amount to the company to compensate for my lost time.

Good jobs in the US really don't have as many horror stories you are always hearing on the internet. I mean, we have lots of other horror stories which are totally true, like our schools being violent and deadly. And rural areas being filled with the stupidest people on the planet. And even in lots of tier one US cities, the public transportation being useless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

How do these comparisons look if we go by pay per hour worked? Because here in Germany the maximum amount you are allowed to work in a week is 60 hours. Unless in special positions (like the ones that have harvesting season or mine stuff), this has to be equalised down to 48 over a 6 week period at max (the special ones just have a longer period for it or a different timing system on what counts as break). If you are in a position that equals to 48 hours a week (6 day week), your minimum PTO is 24 days. If you have a 5 day week it is 20 days, and the numbers above shift down to 50 and 40 respectively. Most jobs that have any kind of skilled work behind them have 30 days PTO. Plus there are a lot of national holidays.

I work in taxes and the average days worked in a year is assumed at 230 (if we don’t have information otherwise ofc). That is less than 2/3 of the year.

Whereas my knowledge on the US is that 60 hour weeks are not necessarily an exception, you get way less PTO, you have less national holidays and you often need to network after hours to even be successful to a moderate degree (of course networking is a thing here as well, but it isn’t that necessary at a medium level, only if you want to get the high positions).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Again in my industry I work 40-50 hours and have 20 days of PTO but it's not really a hard limit. There are ten national holidays on top of that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

So you are always at least at the maximum average we have and often higher, with less PTO and holidays?

You also missed my core statement: how would the salary comparison go if we break it down to a hourly one? How would the gap look then?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Not to mention we are "forced" to take those days and are not in an at-will position where you can get fired any day of the week.