For the countries that publish occupation-level earnings — the UK, Canada, Australia and several EU members — you can compare your own occupation directly, provided you check that the foreign classification covers the same work. Elsewhere you bracket it from national averages and current job postings. In almost every case the answer is dominated not by which country pays most nominally, but by whether your qualification is recognized there and whether you may legally take the job at all.
Start by working out which of three situations you are in
Before searching for a number, establish what kind of evidence is actually available for the countries you are curious about. For a small group you can look up your occupation directly and get a regional figure with a percentile spread attached. For a larger group you will find national or sector averages and nothing more granular. For most of the world there is no official occupational data at all, and what appears in search results is self-reported.
Knowing which situation applies stops you from spending an hour looking for something that does not exist. It also stops you from treating a weak source as a strong one purely because it was the only thing you found, which is the more expensive of the two mistakes. The three situations call for three different methods, and the third one is not a failure — it is simply a different kind of research. Plenty of good decisions get made on bracketed evidence, provided you know that is what you are holding.
Where the data exists, use it and check the definition
Where a national statistical office publishes occupational earnings, go straight to it rather than to any aggregator. You will typically get a median, often a full percentile range, and frequently a regional breakdown, which together tell you far more than a single average ever could. This is the same class of evidence you would use domestically and it deserves the same trust.
The one thing to check before comparing is what the foreign occupational category actually contains. Classifications are built independently in each country for their own administrative purposes, and a category that shares a name with an American one may be drawn more broadly or more narrowly. Read the category definition — it is usually a paragraph — because it occasionally turns out that most of an apparent international pay gap is a difference in who is being counted.
Where only averages exist, bracket it
Take the national average wage, then find whatever broad sector or occupational group breakdown exists and establish how your group compares to the national figure. If professional and technical occupations run some proportion above the national average, and you can find your occupation’s relationship to that group elsewhere, you can construct a defensible range rather than a fabricated point estimate.
Then check it against reality, because a bracket built entirely from national statistics can drift a long way from what employers are actually offering this month. Pull up ten current job postings for your occupation in that country and see whether the advertised ranges sit inside your range. Where pay transparency rules require ranges, this is strong evidence in its own right. Where they do not, employers still advertise them often enough that a scan of listings will tell you whether your bracket is roughly right or badly wrong, which is all you need it to do.
Where nothing is published, go to the market
Recruiters who place people in that market discuss ranges freely, because qualifying candidates on salary expectations is most of what they do. A single fifteen-minute call is frequently better evidence than anything you will find written down, and they are easy to find because they advertise. Professional associations are the other route, and in countries where sector agreements set pay, the agreement itself is published with grades and figures in it.
Be explicit with yourself about what you have got at the end of this. A range from three recruiters and a scan of postings is real evidence and it is not a survey. Write down where each figure came from, because in six months you will not remember which number was solid and which was somebody’s impression.
The thing that outweighs the pay figure entirely
For a large share of occupations, the question of what it pays abroad is downstream of a much harder question: can you practice there at all? Regulated professions — medicine, nursing, law, accountancy, teaching, engineering in many jurisdictions, and the licensed trades — require recognition of your qualification, and recognition ranges from a formality to a multi-year process involving examinations and supervised practice.
This is the single most common reason an international move does not happen, and it almost never appears in an article about international salaries. Before you spend an evening on the pay data, spend twenty minutes on the recognition question with the relevant regulator, because a wonderful salary you are not permitted to earn is not an opportunity. The answer also changes the pay research itself: if recognition takes two years, the figure that matters is what you can earn during those two years, not after them.
The right to work comes before both
The other precondition is immigration, and it interacts with pay in a way people find surprising. Many skilled visa routes carry a minimum salary threshold, which means the floor on what you can be paid is set by the visa rather than by the market. That can work in your favor, since an employer cannot legally offer less, and it can also close off roles that would otherwise have suited you.
Check the threshold for the route you would use before you form a view about whether local salaries look low. In several countries the visa minimum sits meaningfully above the national median, which reframes the entire comparison you were about to make. It also explains something that otherwise looks strange in the data: the jobs open to you as a migrant are not a random sample of the jobs in that country, and comparing your prospective salary to a national average is comparing two different populations.
Where the answer is usually surprising
Occupations that are nationally administered or heavily regulated tend to pay far more evenly across borders than people expect, because the pay is set by a schedule rather than by a local market. Occupations exposed to internationally mobile employers — technology, finance, specialized engineering — show much wider gaps, and those gaps are often larger than any difference in living costs.
The other regular surprise runs the opposite way. Occupations that are prestigious and well compensated in the United States are sometimes unremarkable elsewhere, because the American premium reflects how that particular sector is financed rather than anything about the work. Physicians and some financial roles are the clearest examples, and it catches people out precisely because they were expecting the ranking to hold.
A sensible order to do this in
Recognition first, immigration second, pay third. It feels backwards, because pay is the interesting part and the other two are administrative. But the first two are gates, and there is no point optimizing a number on the far side of a door you cannot open.
Once both gates are clear, the pay research is genuinely quick — an hour for the countries with good data and an afternoon for the ones without. By then you will be researching two or three real possibilities rather than a list of countries, which is a far better use of the afternoon. It is also a much better conversation to have with anybody who is moving with you, because the options on the table are ones that could actually happen.
Common questions
Which countries can I look my occupation up in directly?
Those whose statistical offices publish occupational earnings — the UK, Canada, Australia and several EU members. Go to the office itself rather than an aggregator, and check the category definition before comparing.
What if only national averages are published?
Bracket it. Take the national average, find how your broad occupational group relates to it, build a range, then sanity-check it against ten current job postings.
What do I do where nothing is published?
Go to the market. Recruiters who place in that country discuss ranges freely, and sector agreements — where they exist — are published documents with grades and figures.
What matters more than the pay figure?
Whether your qualification is recognized. For regulated professions, recognition ranges from a formality to a multi-year process, and it is the most common reason an international move does not happen.
How does immigration affect pay?
Many skilled visa routes carry a minimum salary threshold, so the floor is set by the visa rather than the market. In several countries that minimum sits above the national median.
Which occupations vary least internationally?
Those set by national schedules or heavy regulation. Occupations exposed to internationally mobile employers — technology, finance, specialized engineering — show much wider gaps.
What is the common surprise?
Occupations that are unusually well paid in the US are sometimes unremarkable elsewhere, because the American premium reflects how that sector is financed rather than the work itself.
What order should I research in?
Recognition, then immigration, then pay. The first two are gates, and there is no point optimizing a number on the far side of a door you cannot open.