Job openings are a meaningless measure, especially with all the spam postings (and spam job applicants).

Changes in median (or even better, quintile/decile) pay is the only meaningful metric. Preferably from paystubs or tax returns.

Europe just never saw an equivalent hiring spree. The mag7 and other big SV companies hiring during the pandemic was historically unprecedented. Google basically doubled in 3 years.

That to me still seems like the much harder to explain event compared to the recent firings

I suspect there’s also a lot of “keeping the candidate pipeline warm” in case there is suddenly an opening that needs to be filled.

It's amazing there are any engineers or programmers at at all in the UK. When a graduate engineering post is commonly in the region of 25k to 30k, one wonders why anyone would actually aim to do that rather then finance. Sometimes I ask myself the same question - maybe I should have just sold out and I'd be rocking a million-plus detached house like my classmates!

It's also a bit depressing to think that there are posts so near what I started at 15 years ago (mid-low 20s), despite 54% inflation over that period, per the BoE calculator (another claims 64%).

Anecdote to back that up: I caught a BBC podcast this morning, about native vs immigrate skilled workers, which suggested that £50,000 ($68k US) was an ordinary salary for a software developer in the UK.

That's better than the median UK salary, but not exactly a huge draw. The average in the US is six figures.

The methodologies that produce those numbers are always dubious so I wouldn't take that as definitive. But it does support your assertion that UK tech salaries aren't great, at least compared to the US.

Salaries are higher than in Berlin, cost of living is much higher. Or used to be, Berlin is catching up. Also in salaries - it is not clear if it will end up better or worse than London tbh.

UK is bad, but Japan salaries are worse.