Living in Madrid on €80,000: worse off than a provincial teacher

A senior manager in Madrid earns €80,000 and lives worse than a teacher

How much is a gross salary of €80,000 a year in Madrid really worth? Less than it seems. This week a comparison has been making the rounds that hits a nerve: a senior manager in the capital earns practically the same per hour as a secondary school teacher in the Canary Islands, but their cost of living is far higher. The conclusion, uncomfortable for many, is that the big-city executive may live worse than the provincial teacher.

The salary that evaporates in Madrid

The raw numbers: a senior manager reaches €80,000 gross, while a secondary school teacher in the Canary Islands sits at €45,000. The gap is 78%, but reality deflates once you factor in hours worked and the price of everything. Those defending the comparison point out that €80,000 is an exception: most seniors don't get past €40,000 or €45,000. And juniors, in case anyone forgot, are offered €17,500 a year. The dream of the salary elevator stalls on the third floor.

The teacher's schedule versus the executive's

A secondary school teacher works 37.5 hours a week: 28.5 in person and 9 for lesson prep, marking exams and training. The senior manager, assumed to work 50 hours, is considered "lazy" by many if they don't do more. Not counting travel and constant availability. The difference in hours turns the salary gap into parity per hour worked. And while the teacher knows their working day ends, the executive lives with the uncertainty of bonuses, targets and the pressure to prove themselves every quarter.

Job security, the invisible luxury

Here comes the argument nobody wants to hear in the corridors of big companies: being a civil servant in group A1 (the top tier of Spain's public administration) is the closest thing to a "hacklife" in the Spanish job market. Not because of the pay, but because of the stability, the free time and the absence of predictable stress. One damning testimony: a data engineer earning €45,000 in the private sector ended up wrecked by 7 p.m., while the cleaning lady earned more per hour. He switched to a public-sector job at €30,000 and, he says, now lives better.

Madrid, without a capital-city allowance

In London there is the London Weighting: a salary supplement to offset the capital's cost of living. Paris has something similar. Madrid does not. The question hanging in the air is why private companies don't react to a city that has become so expensive that an €80,000 salary barely allows a comfortable life. Perhaps because they know there are always hundreds of graduates willing to take the job. With six public universities and fourteen private ones, the supply of skilled labour is inexhaustible.

The sarracena is uncomfortable for the executive success story. If you do the maths, a high school teacher in a village in Soria or in the Canary Islands makes it to the end of the month with more ease than many executives in Madrid. The solution isn't simple, but the numbers are stubborn. Maybe that's why more and more people repeat the saying "better to sit a civil service exam than to suffer". And with these figures, it no longer sounds like a joke.