Keeping in topic with my last post, I've been browsing through the UBS Price and Earnings report for 2006, the latest available. There's lots of interesting rankings and figures, but not many surprises regarding Portugal. We seem to float around the middle for most rankings. The report has an elegant design, with a few unexpected typos here and there. More importantly, the report could have benefitted from some proof-reading by someone who actually knows a thing or two about European countries. Witness the following passage:
Sofia, Bulgaria, is typical of many cities in our survey. An elementary school teacher there earns just under USD 2100 per month, while a secretary in the private sector takes home almost double that amount. At just under USD 7700 a product manager in the Bulgarian capital earns substantially more – due mainly to the fact that this job profile is in demand, particularly among international or large domestic companies.
This struck me as highly surprising. I've never been to Sofia or Bulgaria, but these values seemed much too high for a developing ex-communist country that just recently joined the EU. A couple of tables in the appendix tell a different story:
- Gross incomes of primary school teachers in Sofia: USD 2100 per year
- Gross incomes of product managers in Sofia: USD 7700 per year
These values are more compatible with my intuition and with several other figures for Sofia presented in the report. You might then say it was a simple typo: someone wrote "USD 2100 per month" when they meant per year. The problem is that the real yearly salaries are far from typical, as is stated in the above quote - they fall at the very bottom of the table for the surveyed cities. I am left with the impression that the person who wrote this passage really thought these were monthly salaries, and consequently knew close to nothing about Bulgaria.
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