In almost every profession, knowing German will increase your earnings: engineers, chemists, physicists, and managers all get paid more if they know German. The same is true for those working in marketing, life sciences, economics, pharmaceuticals, software, telecommunications, and healthcare.
The Economist cites MIT’s Albert Saiz, who got his doctorate from Harvard. Analyzing the salaries of various professionals, Saiz
found quite different premiums for different languages: just 1.5% for Spanish, 2.3% for French and 3.8% for German. This translates into big differences in the language account: your Spanish is worth $51,000, but French, $77,000, and German, $128,000. Humans are famously bad at weighting the future against the present, but if you dangled even a post-dated $128,000 cheque in front of the average 14-year-old, Goethe and Schiller would be hotter than Facebook.
Obviously, the numbers will vary from individual to individual. Saiz reckoned with a $45,000 starting salary. The 3.8% premium for knowing German would be $1710 in the first year. This amount compounds over time. “Assuming just a 1% real salary increase per year and a 2% average real return over 40 years,” Saiz arrives at the figures above.
In any case, learning German is worth it!
