Which sectors really pay more — and the one honest limitation in how we measure it

On the EU-27 average sector structure, finance (1.685×) and IT (1.582×) pay the most above the national average — roughly 68% and 58% more, respectively — followed by energy (1.490×) and other professional services (1.471×). At the other end, hospitality pays just 0.627× the national average — well under two-thirds — with retail (0.874×), transport (0.951×) and construction (0.957×) also below the whole-economy baseline.

The numbers above are the EU-27 average, not a single value shared by all 20 countries on this site. For the 14 EU countries we cover, plus Norway, our country pages use each country's own Eurostat sector ratios, so the IT or finance multiplier for Estonia differs from the one for Germany or Poland. Canada and Australia, which Eurostat does not cover, use this EU-27 structure and are marked as an estimate. Switzerland shows only the sectors with Swiss data, and the United States and the United Kingdom use occupation-level pay from national sources instead of sector ratios.

One more caveat worth knowing: Eurostat measures pay per employee, not per full-time equivalent, so sectors with many part-time workers — such as hospitality, retail, education and healthcare — look lower than a full-time salary would be. The relative order (finance and tech well above average, hospitality well below) is consistent across countries, but treat each multiplier as an estimate of the pattern. The full calculation and its sourcing is documented on our methodology page.

Figures: reference year 2025, from the datasets described on our methodology page.