My pay was equivalent to Singapore $2400 when I was working part-time in a factory in the UK some ten years ago. After paying the rent and necessities, really not much was left. Many people think that when you work in another country, you will get rich. Sadly that is not the case. You have to consider the cost of living and the tax. You can actually save more as a factory worker in Singapore.
Try not to paint a too beautiful mirage of life overseas in your mind. Unless you are a valued talent like scientist, professor, or specialized engineer, your employment will just be simply a normal employment like most people. What profits you might just be the beauty of the four seasons, the welfare, and the democratic and creative freedom.
Jobs were scarce. As a student there were not much part-times to do. I had to go to an employment agency to get onto their waiting list. Maybe just lucky, I got the factory job, but the girl at the agency said only the graveyard shift was available. Since my short course at Edinburgh University was just four months and the earliest class started at 9am, I gave it a shot. I signed the 8pm to 6am shift right on the spot, because I knew if I hesitated, the job would definitely be taken up by other people. My Palestinian friend who applied with me did not get it. Instead he got a mail job at the post office.
At the factory, I worked with a lot of old folks. I immediately see the life of people at the base level. I can tell you their life was harder. I would love to know more about them, but many spoke Highland dialects which I could hardly figure out. Let us not touch on the working hour first. The weather was the first thing which almost made me want to quit immediately. In the cold evening wind, you had to wait for bus 22 to take you to the factory in the suburbs. When you knocked off at 6am, at the moment you came out of the factory you would want to go back to the factory again. Everywhere was ice - you can imagine how cold it was. The second challenge was the 3am droopy eyelid moment. It took me two weeks to tune to it. The third challenge was the sharp cardbox edges. At first I cut my fingers constantly. I felt really small when I came to know that most old folks worked 12 hours or more. When I knocked off, many were still working. There were about 10 students in the night shift and we dared not complain about leg aches because these folks were also standing the whole night.
Statistics are merely statistics. They do not carry insights. The life of European folks who are less educated is not necessarily better than that of ours. One thing to learn from them is their positive mindset. Although the factory was quite a busy place and the conveyor belts broke down quite often, I think I had not seen anyone flare up or any bad blood between anyone. They were very civilized and friendly. It was really teamwork. In Singapore, we usually see grumpy faces in factories and hawker centres and a lot of kpkbs.