Data & Editorial Methodology
Last updated: 11 October 2026
This page explains where the numbers on Placeivo come from, how we calculate the few figures we derive ourselves, and the rules we follow before a city page is published. If anything here does not match what you see on a page, please tell us through the contact page.
1. Our basic rules
- Official sources first. We use national statistics offices, Eurostat, the World Bank and similar public bodies. We do not use crowd-sourced price surveys for headline figures.
- Every figure has a source and a date. Each value on a city page is stored with the organisation that published it, the dataset, the period it refers to and the date we retrieved it. The “Sources & dates” panel on every city page lists them with links.
- No invented numbers. If we do not have a verified figure, the page says Not yet verified. We never fill gaps with estimates, averages from other cities or AI-generated values.
- City data and national data are kept apart. Some indicators (for example safety, healthcare, education or internet access from the World Bank) exist only for whole countries. These are always labelled national on city pages, so they are not mistaken for figures about the city itself.
- Calculations are separate from facts. A value we calculate is marked as a Placeivo calculation and links back to this page.
2. The decision metrics we use today
Monthly rent. For every city we use Eurostat dataset prc_colc_rents, the average monthly rent for a 1-bedroom flat in each EU duty-station city (and London). Eurostat collects it to set pay for EU staff, so it describes a good-quality rented flat in that city, not the cheapest option. Most cities are shown in euros; London is shown in pounds, as published by Eurostat in national currency. For London we also show a second figure, the ONS Price Index of Private Rents, which covers all private rented homes of every size. That second figure is clearly labelled and is not used for comparisons.
Disposable income per person. For EU regions we use Eurostat nama_10r_2hhinc, household disposable income per inhabitant in the region around the city. For London we use the ONS regional gross disposable household income. This is income after taxes and social contributions, averaged over everyone living in the region (including children and retired people), so it is lower than a typical worker’s take-home pay.
Price level index (Brussels = 100). Eurostat publishes cost-of-living correction coefficients for EU staff in each duty station (prc_colc_tot, and prc_colc_ext for places outside the EU such as London). A value of 110 means a similar basket of goods and services costs about 10% more than in Brussels.
Median salary. Where an official earnings survey exists for the city or region (for example the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for London), we show the median gross monthly pay for full-time employees, with its survey year.
3. Figures we calculate: rent burden
Rent burden shows how heavy a typical city rent is compared with local incomes. We calculate it as:
Rent burden (%) = (monthly rent × 12) ÷ annual disposable income per person × 100
Example for Vienna: Eurostat rent of €1,250 a month × 12 = €15,000 a year. Divided by Eurostat disposable income of €28,200 per person, that is 53.2%. A high number does not mean people in that city spend half their income on rent. Many households share a home or have two incomes, and the rent figure describes a good-quality flat. It is a way to compare the pressure of rent between cities on the same basis, not a household budget.
We only calculate rent burden when both inputs come from official sources, use the same currency, and refer to the same place. For London, both the Eurostat rent (£2,000) and the ONS income (£36,487) are in pounds.
Salary needed
Our salary needed pages show the take-home (net) monthly income at which the Eurostat good-quality 1-bedroom rent would take no more than 40% of income (Eurostat defines households spending more than 40% of disposable income on housing as overburdened) and 30% (a common guideline). Net income needed = monthly rent / 0.40 (or / 0.30), rounded up to the nearest 10. These are housing-based minimums: utilities, tax, social contributions and all other living costs are not included.
Living on a set budget
Our living on a budget pages take fixed monthly take-home budgets (EUR 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 and 4,000; for London GBP 1,500 to 5,000) and show what share of each the same Eurostat 1-bedroom rent would take, what is left after rent, and the share if two people split that rent. Rent share = monthly rent / budget. The result labels follow fixed rules: up to 30% = within the 30% guideline; over 30% and up to 40% = tight; over 40% for an own flat but up to 40% when split = only if you share; over 40% even when split = very hard. We do not estimate a total monthly cost of living, because no official source measures one; we show the Eurostat price level instead.
Jobs in demand
Our jobs in demand pages cover the 221 occupations that at least 5 EU/EEA countries reported as in shortage in the European Labour Authority’s EURES Report on labour shortages and surpluses 2025 (annex table 21, published 2026). Specialist medical practitioners are not in annex table 21, so their country list (22 countries short, none in surplus) comes from the same report’s occupational fiche on specialist doctors (table 1). Generalist medical practitioners are reported short in 19 countries, but the report does not publish which ones, so we have no page for them yet. For each occupation we show the countries reporting a shortage or a surplus exactly as listed in that table. Occupations are matched to the International Labour Organization’s ISCO-08 classification by their official title; definitions, tasks and example job titles come from the ILO ISCO-08 structure and definitions file (we corrected three obvious spelling errors in that file’s titles). Pay is Eurostat’s Structure of Earnings Survey 2022 (earn_ses22_48): mean gross monthly earnings of everyone in the occupation’s major group (for example, all professionals) in each country, in euros; where only firms with 10 or more employees are covered, we mark it. It is not the pay of the single job. Rent is the Eurostat good-quality 1-bedroom rent in the capital. Table 21 is built to match countries with shortages to countries with surpluses, so it only lists occupations that at least one country reported in surplus; some occupations (medical doctors, for example) are not in it. We do not treat a missing occupation as having no shortage. Job ads on profession pages come from the official public employment services of Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit job search, searched with a German job title we chose for each occupation) and Sweden (Arbetsförmedlingen JobTech, matched through its ISCO-08 taxonomy). We show the newest ads, refresh them about once a day and link to the original ad; employers write the ads and we do not check them.
Pay in Germany for a single job. For 28 common occupations we also show pay for that exact job in Germany from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit Entgeltatlas (reference date 31 December 2025): the median gross monthly pay of full-time employees subject to social insurance across all of Germany, with the lower and upper quartile and the number of employees. It includes extras such as holiday and Christmas pay; civil servants, the self-employed and apprentices are not included. Pay above the social insurance ceiling is not published, so we show it as “over” that amount. To link an ISCO-08 occupation to the German occupation code (KldB 2010) we looked up its main German job title in the Bundesagentur für Arbeit BERUFENET database and used the code given there; the German job title and code are shown on each page.
Pay in the UK for a single job. For 72 occupations we also show UK pay from the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE 2026 provisional, released October 2026, Table 14): the median gross annual and weekly pay of full-time employee jobs across the whole UK in pounds sterling, matched by us from ISCO-08 to the closest UK occupation (SOC 2020 code and title shown on each page), with estimates that ONS does not publish shown as “Not yet verified” and small-sample estimates flagged.
UK Skilled Worker visa for a single job. On the same UK-matched job pages we show whether the occupation (SOC 2020 code) is eligible for the UK Skilled Worker visa (Higher Skilled, Medium Skilled or Ineligible) and its standard and lower going rate a year, copied from the official GOV.UK tables published by UK Visas and Immigration (version shown on each page). The general minimum salary comes from the GOV.UK Skilled Worker visa guidance. Healthcare and education jobs follow national pay scales, so no going rate is shown for them. This is a summary of official rules, not legal advice; rules change, so always check GOV.UK.
Take-home pay by country
City pages and our salary after tax in Europe table show what an average worker keeps after income tax and employee social security, from Eurostat (dataset earn_nt_net, model calculations made with the OECD). “Average pay” means the average gross earnings of a full-time worker in industry and services in that country. These are national figures in euros, labelled as national; monthly amounts are the yearly figure divided by 12. Special tax schemes for newcomers are not included.
City statistics (Eurostat Urban Audit)
City pages for the European capitals show city-level figures from the Eurostat Urban Audit (city statistics) where Eurostat publishes them: population on 1 January (dataset urb_cpop1, indicator DE1001V), unemployment rate (urb_clma, EC1020I), residents with foreign citizenship, with non-EU citizenship and born abroad (urb_cpopcb, DE2007I, DE2003I, DE2009I), and the cost of a combined monthly public transport ticket for 5-10 km in the central zone, in euros (urb_ctran, TT1080V). Each figure is the latest year Eurostat has for that city and is shown with its year, so years can differ between figures and cities. Figures older than 2015 are not shown, and a missing figure is shown as Not yet verified. For some capitals the area is the Urban Audit “greater city”, which is larger than the municipality; the page names the area. Where a city unemployment rate exists, the Income panel shows it next to the national rate, each labelled; the two can differ because they cover different areas and come from different sources.
What residents say
City pages for the European capitals include a section on what residents say, and our rankings of European capitals by their residents use the same data. The source is the European Commission survey on quality of life in European cities, 2023 wave, published by Eurostat (dataset urb_percep). Each figure is the share of residents who gave an answer. Where a question has two positive answers, for example “very satisfied” and “rather satisfied” or “strongly agree” and “somewhat agree”, we add the two shares. Some cities were surveyed as the wider greater-city area. These are residents’ own views of their city, not measured crime, rent or job figures, and we do not turn them into scores.
4. When a city page is published
We publish a city page for search engines only when it has at least three decision metrics (such as rent, income, price level or salary), each with a named source and a date. Cities with less data stay on the site but are marked as not yet indexed and are kept out of our sitemap. Weather and air-quality readings are useful context but do not count towards this rule, because they do not help someone decide whether they can afford or want to live somewhere.
Weather. Where shown, average temperature and total rainfall come from the Open-Meteo historical weather archive for one full calendar year. One year of weather is not a long-term climate average, and we label it that way.
5. Freshness and updates
Official statistics are published on fixed schedules, often once a year, so most figures describe a past period. We show that period next to each value. We check our sources and replace a figure when a newer official release appears. The previous value is kept in our records so changes can be traced.
6. Comparisons between cities
Our city comparison pages put the same measures side by side, with the source and year under each figure. We only calculate a percentage difference when both cities are measured by the same survey in the same currency. When the figures come from different surveys, or are published in different currencies, the page says so instead of comparing them directly. No overall winner is declared.
7. What Placeivo is not
Placeivo gives general information from public statistics. It is not visa, legal, tax, financial or relocation advice. Always check current rules with the official authority before making a decision. See our sources policy and corrections policy for more.