Salary: Even couples don't exchange ideas

According to a survey, many Germans do not speak about their salary - the issue is also avoided among couples.

• The issue of salary is still avoided among many employees.

• This could be due to a widespread rumor .
• But confidentiality is not only true among colleagues.

Hardly anyone talks about it, asking is considered rude and yet somehow it interests them - the subject of salary is uncomfortable for many people. But salary lists are not only a rarity in companies - it is also far from normal among employees to disclose the amount of their wages .

Taboo topic salary: Couples don't talk about it either

A survey by the online job portal StepStone among 12,000 people shows that although 63 percent of the respondents stated that they had no problem talking about their salary * and more than half are interested in the wages of the others, only a small proportion of them seem to be to be open when it comes to money .

Only a third said they talked to friends about the amount of the wages - only 18 percent of them with colleagues. In relationships , too, the information is often kept secret, so only 50 percent of the participants give their partner an insight into the payslip * .

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Germans are particularly silent

Compared to other European countries, Germany is particularly silent. As previous studies show, around 26 percent of employees across Europe speak to their colleagues about the salary. The reason for this could possibly be a widespread rumor : Many employees think that talks about wages may be prohibited under the employment contract * . But that's nonsense!

Because such bans are not legal. This emerges from a judgment made ten years ago by the Rostock State Labor Court. It justified an employee's complaint that colleagues may exchange information about their salaries *.

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Wage transparency doesn't make you happier

It is unclear whether wage transparency leads to reasonable salaries. The fact is: who knows what his colleagues earn is not necessarily happier . So it can happen that the comparison between employees leads to closer attention being paid to why the other person gets more money *. In the worst case, this can lead to envy and resentment .

Studies also show, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, that "higher earners" are not happier when they learn that they get more wages for their work. People in lower positions were even more unhappy than before after the comparison.

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* Merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network.

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