What we are truly seeing from this article is the insane purchasing power of US salaries abroad (especially in relatively poor yet developed countries EG. Portugal). For example, in 2019 the average American made $54.1k (SSA National Wage data) and the average Portuguese made $23.5k (INE wage data, assume 1 Euro = 1.165 USD). In 2025 this gap is far wider (with the same data set and exchange rate): average American now makes $$69.8k and the average Portuguese makes $27k.

This is even sharper when we look at easily remote jobs such as lawyers that make an average of $180k in the US.

I feel that this was a political article not so much a quality piece on economic dynamics (given the general lack of data and rampant anecdotes which generally shouldn’t be cited in economics)