A recruiter sends over a number. You paste it into a currency converter, compare it to what you earn now, and feel either delighted or insulted. That instinct is understandable and almost always wrong.
The market rate answers a different question
A nominal exchange rate answers: if I moved this money across a border today, what would arrive? That matters for remittances and for buying things priced abroad. It does not tell you what your rent, your groceries or your commute will cost once you are living there.
Two countries with the same nominal salary can offer wildly different lives. Housing is the biggest lever — it is the largest line in most budgets and the least tradeable across borders — followed by services, where local wages set the price of everything from a haircut to childcare.
A better way to compare an offer
Convert the offer using local price levels, then sanity-check it against what people in that country actually earn. A salary that looks generous in PPP terms but sits below the local median is telling you something about the role, not just the country.
Then adjust for the parts a national average cannot see: which city, whether housing is included, and how much of your spending stays in your home currency — loans, family support, savings you intend to keep abroad. Those portions genuinely do convert at the market rate.
The honest summary
Use the market rate for money that crosses the border. Use purchasing power for money you will spend where you live. Most offers involve both, which is why comparing them properly takes two numbers rather than one.