Key Takeaways
- Erlangen has the highest median wage among Germany’s 107 independent cities, at €6,083 a month in 2025. Expert-level jobs pay the most in Germany, and Erlangen has 2.3 times the national share of these jobs.
- Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg pay higher median wages than Munich. Nearly half of all jobs in both cities are skilled-worker jobs, and carmakers Audi and Volkswagen pay these workers well.
- Gera pays the lowest median wage among Germany’s 107 independent cities. Gera has fewer well-paid jobs, and the same jobs pay less in eastern Germany than in western Germany.
- Gera recorded the fastest median wage growth among Germany’s 107 independent cities from 2021 to 2025. Germany’s minimum wage raised pay for Gera’s many low earners, which helped Gera catch up with higher-paying cities.
- The kind of work a city offers matters most for pay in Germany. Expert-level jobs and car making lift cities to the top of the pay ranking.
Highest and Lowest Median Gross Monthly Wages in German Cities
| Rank (of 107) | City | State | Median gross monthly wage (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Erlangen | Bavaria | 6,083 |
| 2 | Ingolstadt | Bavaria | 5,937 |
| 3 | Wolfsburg | Lower Saxony | 5,775 |
| 4 | Munich | Bavaria | 5,600 |
| 5 | Stuttgart | Baden-Württemberg | 5,551 |
| 6 | Ludwigshafen am Rhein | Rhineland-Palatinate | 5,471 |
| 7 | Frankfurt am Main | Hesse | 5,469 |
| 8 | Darmstadt | Hesse | 5,295 |
| 9 | Bonn | North Rhine-Westphalia | 5,082 |
| 10 | Salzgitter | Lower Saxony | 5,017 |
| 98 | Chemnitz | Saxony | 3,794 |
| 99 | Brandenburg an der Havel | Brandenburg | 3,790 |
| 100 | Weiden in der Oberpfalz | Bavaria | 3,776 |
| 101 | Erfurt | Thuringia | 3,763 |
| 102 | Dessau-Roßlau | Saxony-Anhalt | 3,760 |
| 103 | Hof | Bavaria | 3,715 |
| 104 | Frankfurt (Oder) | Brandenburg | 3,659 |
| 105 | Delmenhorst | Lower Saxony | 3,595 |
| 106 | Suhl | Thuringia | 3,515 |
| 107 | Gera | Thuringia | 3,444 |
Source: Statistik der Bundesagentur für Arbeit
Data cover full-time employees paying social security contributions. Apprentices and people on special pay schemes, such as federal volunteer service, are excluded.
Gross monthly wage is pay before tax and social security contributions. It includes special payments such as holiday and Christmas bonuses, overtime pay and commissions.
Employers report wages only up to the pension insurance contribution ceiling, so the source publishes medians rather than averages.
Hannover, Aachen and Saarbrücken are not listed separately. Each is reported as part of a regional association (Region Hannover, Städteregion Aachen, Regionalverband Saarbrücken).
Figures are by place of work. Measured by place of residence instead, Munich ranks first at €5,325 and Erlangen second at €5,304.
Erlangen Is the Highest-Paying City in Germany
Erlangen and Gera are the highest and lowest-paying cities in Germany among 107 independent cities. An independent city runs as its own district instead of sitting inside a county.
The pay ranking of Germany’s 107 independent cities compares median wages. Half of full-time employees in a city earn more than the median wage, and the other half earn less.
Erlangen’s median gross monthly wage reached €6,083 in 2025. Erlangen’s median wage is 44% higher than Germany’s national median gross monthly wage of €4,217.
Erlangen’s high pay comes from expert-level jobs. Expert-level jobs are highly complex, usually require a university degree, and pay the most in Germany.
What Are the Highest-Paying Jobs in Germany? ->
Erlangen has the highest share of expert-level jobs among Germany’s 107 independent cities. In Erlangen, 38.6% of full-time jobs are expert-level jobs, compared with 16.9% across Germany.
Erlangen’s many expert-level jobs are linked to the city’s universities, research and medical technology. Erlangen is home to Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU), the medical technology company Siemens Healthineers and a large university hospital.
Carmakers Put Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg Among the Highest Paying Cities in Germany
Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg rank second and third for median wage among Germany’s 107 independent cities. They rank ahead of Munich, even though Munich has the second-highest share of expert-level jobs.
Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg pay more than Munich because of jobs that need an apprenticeship instead of a university degree. These skilled-worker jobs make up nearly half of all full-time jobs in both cities, compared with about a third in Munich.
On top of having more skilled workers, Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg also pay them far more than Munich does, based on median gross monthly wages for skilled workers in 2025:
- Ingolstadt: €5,267
- Wolfsburg: €5,073
- Munich: €4,544
- Germany: €3,909
In Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg, many skilled workers work for carmakers. Audi is headquartered in Ingolstadt, and Volkswagen’s main plant is in Wolfsburg.
Around 40,000 people worked at Audi’s Ingolstadt site at the end of 2025. Around 70,000 worked at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg plant in March 2024.
Car making is one of Germany’s better-paid industries. The metal, electrical and steel industry, which includes car making, pays a median wage of €4,891, compared with €4,217 across all industries.
Munich gets far less of this boost from well-paid car-making jobs, because it has far fewer factory jobs. Only 12.9% of Munich’s full-time jobs are in manufacturing, compared with 24.5% across Germany.
Eastern Cities Like Gera Dominate the Lowest-Paying Cities in Germany
Gera is the lowest-paying city among Germany’s 107 independent cities. In 2025, half of Gera’s full-time employees earned less than €3,444 a month before tax.
Gera’s pay sits far below the pay in Erlangen, the top-paying city among Germany’s 107 independent cities. Erlangen’s median wage is 77% higher than Gera’s.
Gera’s low pay is part of an eastern pattern. Seven of the 10 lowest-paying independent cities are in eastern German states.
Gera pays less for two reasons. The first reason is that Gera has fewer well-paid jobs and more low-paid jobs than Germany as a whole, based on shares of full-time jobs in 2025:
- Expert-level jobs: 12% in Gera, 17% in Germany
- Factory jobs: 15% in Gera, 25% in Germany
- Retail jobs: 19% in Gera, 12% in Germany
Gera’s job mix matters because expert-level and factory jobs across Germany pay more than the national median wage of €4,217. By contrast, retail jobs across Germany pay a median wage of only €3,598.
The second reason Gera pays less is that the same jobs pay less there. Skilled workers in Gera earn a median wage of €3,328 a month, compared with €3,909 across Germany.
Gera’s lower pay for the same jobs is part of a wider East-West pay gap. The East-West pay gap is widest in manufacturing.
In 2024, car manufacturing workers in eastern Germany earned 29% less than car manufacturing workers in western Germany.
Lower pay in eastern Germany is also linked to fewer collective wage agreements. A collective wage agreement is a pay deal that unions negotiate with employers.
In 2024, 41.7% of employees in eastern Germany worked at companies with a collective wage agreement, compared with 50% in western Germany. In 2023, employees without a collective wage agreement earned about 10% less than comparable employees with one.
The Pay Gap Between Germany’s Highest and Lowest-Paying Cities Is Narrowing in Percentage Terms
Despite being the lowest-paying city, Gera recorded the fastest median wage growth among Germany’s 107 independent cities from 2021 to 2025. Gera also has far more low earners than Erlangen:
| Place | Median gross monthly wage (2021) | Median gross monthly wage (2025) | Growth | Full-time employees earning €3,000 or less (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gera | €2,687 | €3,444 | +28.2% | 34.2% |
| Erlangen | €5,091 | €6,083 | +19.5% | 8.7% |
| Germany | €3,516 | €4,217 | +19.9% | 19.9% |
Germany’s minimum wage rose from €9.50 an hour in January 2021 to €12.82 an hour in January 2025. This increase benefits low-wage workers most.
Far more people earn low wages in Gera than in Erlangen. So the minimum wage raised pay for far more workers in Gera and pushed Gera’s median wage up faster.
Even so, the pay gap between Erlangen and Gera grew in euros. A smaller percentage rise on a much bigger wage still adds more euros.
Erlangen’s median wage rose by €992 a month from 2021 to 2025. Gera’s median wage rose by only €757, so the gap between the two cities grew by €235 a month.
Eastern wages overall are catching up too. The gap in median wages for full-time employees between eastern and western Germany fell from 26% in 2012 to 14% in 2024.
Even as eastern wages catch up with western wages, pay in a German city still depends mostly on the kind of work the city offers. Cities with many expert-level jobs or a large car industry pay the most.
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References
- https://statistik.arbeitsagentur.de/SiteGlobals/Forms/Suche/Einzelheftsuche_Formular.html?nn=21424&topic_f=beschaeftigung-entgelt-entgelt
- https://erlangen.de/en/aktuelles/medizinstadt_erlangen
- https://www.fau.eu/university/facts-and-figures/
- https://www.audi.com/en/audi-in-ingolstadt-5543/profile-of-location-5544
- https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/wolfsburg-plant-the-heart-of-the-vw-brand-6811
- https://iab.de/presseinfo/trotz-schrumpfender-lohnluecke-beschaeftigte-im-osten-verdienen-immer-noch-14-prozent-weniger-als-im-westen/
- https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/21/008/2100857.pdf
- https://www.boeckler.de/de/pressemitteilungen-2675-ohne-tarifvertrag-fehlt-beschaeftigten-ein-volles-monatsgehalt-59912.htm
- https://doku.iab.de/stellungnahme/2025/sn0125.pdf
