Mean or median:
which is average?
Both describe a centre, but they react differently when some people earn much more than most.
2024 MEDIAN€44,816
The midpoint: half of employments were below this amount and half above.
2024 MEAN€56,356
The total pay divided by the number of employments. High pay pulls it upwards.
Which one should you use?
Start with the median if you want to know what a typical employment earned. Use the mean when you want the arithmetic average across all employments, including very high earners. The difference between the two tells you something about the spread of pay.
Neither figure is the salary for a particular job. For that, look at the profession guides or a public pay scale. All figures on this page are gross annual earnings from the CSO's 2024 EAADS release.