How Accurate Is PayScale Compared to Your Actual Salary?

Hello,

Just wondering if the 'PayScale' website was indeed accurate.

I'm not sure if it's because I live in Sydney but the salaries always seems well under what they should be.

Take a look and report back its accuracy for your profession.

Examples:

Optometrist: $85,000

Accountant: $75,000

Cardiologist: $103,000

Dentist: $97,000

Attorney: $69,000

Personally mine is about $25,000 off my actual and I'm in the early part of my career.

https://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Country=Australia/Salar…

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Comments

  • +7

    it lists ozbargainer as 4000 eneloops. - so it is pretty accurate

  • +1

    Clearly inaccurate GP 126,151 vs cardiologist 103,000

    • Yes, GP should be 2x that. Cardiologist 3x.

      • You think the average GP makes over $200,000 a year?

        • Yes, I think so.

          It's not that hard to work out the GPRA website has a calculator.

          Mixed billings seeing 4-5 patients an hour at 65% billings working full-time.

          Would get close to $200,000 - That does not include holiday pay and super.

          • +6

            @[Deactivated]: You're using numbers which would suggest you own or manage the practice (65%+). That is not realistic for most GPs.
            Further you're suggesting mixed billing when 85% of sessions are bulk billed.

            GPs typically aren't paid holiday pay as they're often not employees, rather contractors to the practice.

            For metro GPs, a more realistic amount is ~$150,000-200,000. Don't get me wrong, that's a good amount, but it's not exactly easy work.

            And don't forget this is relation to private practice.

            • @DogGunn: It does not seem uncommon to get 65% of billings where I am as a GP contractor.

              North Shore/ Northern Beaches of Sydney.

              I'm a PGY2 JMO (Medical Resident) so I'm not in a position to comment directly but I've met a few GP's.

              Are you a General Practitioner DogGunn?

              • @[Deactivated]: I am not a GP, however I have had business experience with a GP that did mixed billing. 65% sounds a bit high for what I saw.

                However because no one works 52 weeks a year, it is unlikely that your typical 40hr week worker would get far above $200,000 a year in a metro area.

                That said, I know GPs that have been working in rural areas that rake it in. I don't understand the logic in that (guessing it is to incentivise doctors to move rural).

                • @DogGunn: Yes, certainly not much more than $200k if you work your typical 40 hour weeks.

                  Many GP's work weekends and overtime but it's not a great life when that extra pay is heavily taxed.

              • @[Deactivated]: 65% is common. 70% for some bulk billing practices to make up for the shortfall in income. I have heard 55% only for skin specialised GP clinics (higher fees). Having said that those are max figures.

            • @DogGunn: 85% bulk billing!?!?! You're kidding yourself.

          • @[Deactivated]: From personal experience it's around 200-230k gross for 11 months to take into account annual leave / public holidays (so still have to pay own super, no sick leave / long service leave).

            From my time in medical admin type role I know they factor in 25% on top for leave entitlements when working out costs of employees - so basically GPs earn slightly less than a new specialist.

            Having said that a corporate chain did approach me and offered me the potential for 350k at one of their bulk billing churn and burn clinics (Not that they advertised that). I turned them down of course. But it peeves me that lower quality medicine gets rewarded with higher pay.

        • Can be around that range, but also keep in mind medical defence insurance can be tens of thousands of dollars, and they don't get Super / Holidays as they're typically sub-contractors even when they aren't practice owners.

          $126,151 is probably for working in a public hospital or some such and would be + Super + 5 weeks holiday.

          It also varies quite a bit. Inner city GPs see a lot of people for medical certificates and do easy things, outer suburbs often have to deal with complex cases for bulk billed patients for which they do a heap of unpaid work.

          • @[Deactivated]: Yes - So much respect for GP's

            I'm heading towards being a Cardiologist but GP is a close second.

  • +1

    50% off for me

  • 2-3 times off for me

  • You say

    Accountant: $75,000

    But the home page says:

    Accountant
    Median Salary: AU$55,813 (it's an example I'm assuming)

    Then I searched for "accountant" and clicked "accountant" and it says:

    AU$55,954
    Avg. Salary.

    Using my (worthless) intuition those figures seem suspiciously close. It implies that there are few outliers amongst accountants when it comes to how they are paid. It's not impossible.

    If you look at Australia workers as a whole the average income (earnings - tax) is in the neighbourhood of $65,000 whereas the median income is around $44,000. This reflects the fact there there is a small group of workers earning a relatively large amount compared to every other worker.

    • "there is a small group of workers earning a relatively large amount compared to every other worker."

      That makes sense, but my personal experience is I feel I am at the lower end earning scale (and I earn well over 75k). Just about everyone I know earns more than I do on salary. Its all relative, but it doesn't feel like I am on above average income when a large proportion of friends I grew up with are on 200k+

  • +5

    30% off for me. Seems like the whole site is created by employer groups trying to screw over employees.

    • Yea, I thought the same thing, all of the employers putting $0 as the salary to lower the average.

  • +1

    I want to know where my $1.50 per hour in tips are that it says I should be getting.

    • I think you should arrange a meeting with your manager tomorrow!

  • It thinks the median is above what I get paid, but has incentives that I don't get which are way more. Also with my level of experience apparently I'm quite underpaid. Not surprised really, they tend to do these things based on advertised salaries which often are not offered / inflated by recruiters.

    Basically I get the opposite experience, I think these things tend to overstate how much people actually get paid. You have to look at the 'early career' and other things to get that though. I find that experience isn't as well rewarded as these things think.

    Actually put in my previous job, and that came in under, though I assume that's because I had a lot of experience, rather than the amount being wrong. I know several people for who that salary is accurate, but they had lower experience.

  • +3

    Hahahaha @ attorneys on $69k… they missed the 1 in front of the 69.

    • -1

      Uh, the average lawyer in AU definitely almost certainly earns less than $100k. The high hourly rates are earnt by equity partners (one has a better chance of winning the lottery than making partnership at a law firm) and a significant portion of those rates is, in any case, absorbed into overheads.

      • -1

        Overheads being BMW/MB investment cars, multi million dolloar houses in leafy north shore waterfront suburbs. Holidays to places some people find hard to pronounce.

        I used to work for a multi-franchise luxury car dealer, and I can assure you there are plenty of attorneys driving cars well out of the budget of $69k/year. About 70% of our clients were in law related fields,

        Forgive me if my heart doesn’t bleed for them…

  • It seems completely wrong for the medical professions…

  • Mine is on the dot. 99% accuracy! Strange! (Engineering profession)

    • Really? Average mech eng salary is AU$71,976 according to the website. Which is maybe accurate for a grad straight out of uni…..

      • Yes, I'm talking about a graduate role. The salary is almost same as the median salary for my field of Engineering.

    • +3

      Engineer.
      1% off acceptable.
      Profession checks out.

    • Im a Mech Eng in Newcastle (15yrs experience).
      Apparently im earning 15% higher than my market worth so I better stop complaining (was this site designed by Illuminati lizard people in HR to deliberately give low numbers so people dont ask for a raise???)

  • +1

    Mine is about 30% out (listed too low), but i think it is because it's not just Australia? there are people in hyderabad who work for the equivalent of a 1/4 of what I do (part of my role is to farm out work to them). so if they were to contribute to this website, it would skew the stats.

    • You can filter on your city

  • mine lists the median at a few grand more than I make, once you specify sydney, its about 7 grand higher than what i make.

  • Just a note that you can filter to your city.
    Mine was pretty much correct. I’m about 2% higher than average so pretty accurate in my case.

  • Under the job title Senior Process Engineer it is stating a salary that is about $35k (Melbourne location) than my current salary. Even when I used the job title Process Engineer and compared it to my last role the average salary was lower by about $15k (Perth location).

    I don't know where this site is gathering data from but it appears to be off by quite a bit (on the low side)

    • +1

      Employer's wish list of wages.

  • +1

    Business Intelligence (BI) Developer AU$91,100 Avg. Salary. That's around 30-40% under what is true in the market in Sydney

    • In IT industry, a job title is a gross generalisation, BI Developer could be an excel report writer, or an ETL developer, or an end to end BI Developer. Who knows.

  • Could also be quite a variance between contractors/consultants Vs in-house/permanent staff

  • Site is awful. Between 50%-100% off for most IT roles (site is lower than reality)

  • About spot on for me, but I'm fairly junior in my profession

  • totally wrong. There is no way I'm earning more than a cardiologist lol

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