Australian Salary Survey - How much will I earn in Australia?

When moving out to Australia the question around Australian Salary’s and how these compare to those paid in your current country are often one of those frequently asked questions which will be important to everyone.

The consensus is that due to Australia’s ‘Cheaper’ cost of living, the average salary can often be 10 - 20% less then those paid in your home country.

I know when we moved from the UK to Australia I was told to expect to take a big pay cut if I was applying for a similar job, having said that I think it really comes down to the case of supply and demand and thankfully I was able to secure a job paying a similar kind of salary to the one I was paid in the UK.

Thankfully, there are a number of Australian based recruitment companies who regularly Review and publish Salary Survey information. These are a really helpful resource for you to review if you want to get an indication of the kind of Salaries being paid within a specific region.

Michael Page International has recently published the results of its most recent survey.

The surveys are broken down into a number of areas and include:

• Banking (.pdf 149KB)
• Accounting (.pdf 149KB)
• Chartered Accounting Profession (.pdf 149KB)
• Engineering (.pdf 135KB)
• Procurement & Supply Chain (.pdf 121KB)
• Human Resources (.pdf 123KB)
• Legal (.pdf 127KB)
• Sales (.pdf 143KB)
• Marketing (.pdf 147KB)
• Technology (.pdf 138KB)

You’ll need the Adobe’s acrobat reader to open these files. It’s a free application and if your not one of the 98% of computer users who already have this you can download it by clicking here.

Another of the large recruitment companies; Hays, also publish a similar survey on an annual basis.

The Hays Survey is compiled from information collected from their 42 locations throughout Australia and New Zealand and are based on the average salary paid on over 12,000 jobs advertised by Hays in the previous 12 months.

Similarly to the Michael Page Salary Surveys, the Hays Surveys are broken down into a number of key areas including Accountancy and Finance, Insurance, Contact Centres, Resourcing and Mining and Legal to name just a few.

Surveys are great but sometimes are so generic they may not give you all of the information you need to get a true idea of the kind of money you might end up earning within Australia.

Prior to moving to Australia I found the best way to get an idea of the Salary I could expect to be paid was by simply searching for a role similar to my current role on a number of the Aussie based recruitment websites.

Seek.com.au is touted as being Australia’s No 1 Employment site, however I also found that sites such as Jobserve.com.au and Mycareer.com.au also presented some decent information.

You’ll quickly find that there is some duplication of the roles advertised on these sites so the site you decide to settle on will really come down to your own personal preferences I guess.

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