How Much Are World Cup Racers Paid in 2024? - Pinkbike's State of the Sport Survey 2024
Welcome to the 2024 Pinkbike State of the Sport Survey. This anonymous survey is designed to highlight key issues and riders' perspectives on the sport that we, pro riders, and Pinkbike readers all love so much. We surveyed the best riders in the world to hear their thoughts, ideas, concerns, and criticisms on mountain biking in 2024. Now, we're breaking down what we've learned. We're now publishing a series of articles that break down sections of the results, and you'll see the results in full shortly. This year, we introduced the public survey, which will help gauge public views on the sport and should make for some interesting comparisons to what the racers say. Stay tuned for that. To read the introduction to the survey click here, and to see all the other currently published SOTS articles click here.
The salary of athletes can be common knowledge in other sports, but the pay of World Cup riders has always remained secretive as total financial earnings are closely guarded. Since our first State of the Sport survey in 2021 where we tried to give the first public look at the financial side of racing, things have not changed much with the industry still keeping salaries hidden behind non-disclosure statements inside rider contracts.
To continue offering one of the few public datasets on rider pay, we focus on remuneration as a section of our State of the Sport survey.
Rider pay is an important metric, but it doesn't always show the complete financial picture as brands may be spending thousands outside of salary to get a rider to World Cups. Regardless of the rider's remuneration, the total investment from a brand to go racing on an international stage is significant; it's easy to spend $50K+ per rider on travel, accommodation, food, fees, mechanical support, etc. for a season. There are instances where racers take a lower dollar figure to get on a factory team versus a higher wage and managing all their own independent deals.
It's important to note that the data below only represents those we surveyed who are among the sport's top competitive riders. Anyone who fell outside our selection criteria was not invited to answer the survey and could account for earning lower than some of the numbers covered here. Several riders also declined to answer some of these questions and we have removed the single rider who earns more than USD 500,000 from most graphs to ensure they remain anonymous.
Before we get into the data, you can see a breakdown of who we surveyed and more information about the 2024 State of the Sport survey here.
Overview
Let's look at the big picture and see how the data stacks up across the World Cup disciplines of Downhill, Enduro and XC. Diving straight into the total earnings of riders the largest income bracket was the $50,000 to $100,000 USD range on 22.4% of riders. Sitting with 19.6% of responses was the lowest bracket of $0 to $5,000 USD. It's interesting to note, this was the largest group of riders in our first survey with 27.3% of responses. There is then a drop to the third largest pay bracket of $10,000 to $20,000 USD, this is the total earnings for 13.1% of respondents.
Quick Stats:
Mode Wage: 50,000-100,000 USD
Median Wage: 30,000 - 40,000 USD
Mode Wage: 50,000-100,000 USD
Median Wage: 30,000 - 40,000 USD
The top of the pay range was one rider answering that they receive over $500,000 USD a year. The top rider's income is an outlier in the data as the median wage is far lower for all disciplines at $30,000 to $40,000 USD. We found that 68.5% of survey responders receive a full income from mountain biking. Although sadly, there are still those who do not earn a wage from racing. Even though 68.5% receive a full income from racing, only 34% of racers who responded to the survey have between 80 to 100% of their income from a guaranteed salary.
Going deeper into the pay brackets by discipline, we found both Downhill and Enduro feature 25% of respondents earning between zero and $5,000 USD from their racing. Compared to XC, this bracket contained just 3.3% of riders who responded to the survey. For Downhill, the lowest pay grade is the largest represented group, whereas both XC and Enduro saw the biggest group of riders earning $50,000 to $100,000 USD. It's interesting to see that Enduro, which historically attracts far less coverage than Downhill with no live broadcast, appears to have, on average, a higher level of pay than the top Downhill riders.
Finally, before we take a closer look at each discipline and Junior/U21/U23 racing, we also asked about the fairness of pay and whether anyone feels taken advantage of in contract negotiations. For the perception of fair pay, riders were mostly neutral (33.3%), with riders who agreed they were paid fairly at 29.6% and those who disagreed at 26.9%. Those who felt strongly either way were sitting far below the other responses suggesting at least from our sample of riders that there is not a strong consensus in either direction on this issue.
We also asked riders if they feel taken advantage of, with most responding that they do feel this at least "a little bit." The choice of "a little bit" was chosen by 52.8% of respondents with the next most popular option being "significantly." 15.7% felt that they were not taken advantage of at all during contract negotiations.
Downhill
Not only was Downhill the largest dataset in the survey (at 40.7% of all respondents), but it also featured the greatest income range. Downhill was the only discipline to have a rider who earns over $500,000 USD answer the survey. Despite the expansive range of incomes, Downhill had a mode wage of $0 to $5,000 USD. The median range for Downhill was higher at $20,000 to $30,000 USD.
Quick Stats:
Mode Wage: $0-5,000 USD
Median Wage: $20,000 - 30,000 USD
Mode Wage: $0-5,000 USD
Median Wage: $20,000 - 30,000 USD
When looking closer at the earnings brackets for downhill, the $0 to $5,000 USD range accounted for 25% of respondents, with the next most popular option being the $10,000 to $20,000 USD range at 15.9%. While we see 13.6% of riders at $50,000 to $100,000 USD and 9.1% at $250,000 to $500,000 USD, over 50% still earn below $30,000 USD in the sport commonly referred to as the Formula 1 of mountain biking.
Of the riders surveyed who race Downhill World Cups, 70.5% can earn a full income. A further 9.1% makeup at least part of their wage with mountain biking but may need to earn money elsewhere. Sadly, 20.5% of the world's best racers don't earn a wage from mountain biking. These numbers may mean that of the 25% who earn less than $5,000 USD, most will earn $0 USD.
Enduro
This year's financial data from the top Enduro riders follows the previous trend from past State of the Sport surveys, with higher average incomes than those racing at the sharp end of Downhill. Despite many worrying about the future of Enduro racing, the Mode wage sits equal with cross country at $50,000 to $100,000 USD. The median wage was slightly lower than XC, sitting between $30,000 and $40,000 USD. The number of respondents for Enduro was slightly lower than that for Downhill, so it's worth bearing in mind that our samples could have been slightly skewed by having more riders at either end of the pay scale. Of course, this data is all there is to go on across the industry, so it is still useful to gain insight into general pay trends.
Quick Stats:
Mode Wage: $50,000-$100,000 USD
Median Wage: $30,000 - $40,000 USD
Mode Wage: $50,000-$100,000 USD
Median Wage: $30,000 - $40,000 USD
While the mode wage for Enduro is $50,000 to $100,000 USD, it was closely contested by the $0 to $5000 USD income bracket with just a 3% difference between the two. The closeness of these two quite different levels of pay suggests a pay divide amongst the best Enduro riders, with top performers either paid relatively well or receiving very little for their hard work. Following that interpretation of the data, it is interesting to see further numbers illustrating that 20.6% of World Cup Enduro racers who answered our survey do not take a wage from mountain biking. However, we did find that Enduro has more riders with a guaranteed salary of 80-100% than the overall numbers across Downhill, Enduro and XC racers.
XC
Finally, we have the XC racer data where none of the top riders surveyed were not making a wage from mountain biking. 96.6% of those who answered our questions earn more than 50% of their income from mountain biking, with 73.3% of these riders receiving a full income from riding bikes. The mode wage for the surveyed riders was equal to the Enduro racers at $50,000 to $100,000 USD with a median wage of $40,000 USD.
Quick Stats:
Mode Wage: $50,000-$100,000 USD
Median Wage: $40,000 USD
Mode Wage: $50,000-$100,000 USD
Median Wage: $40,000 USD
For XC racer's total earnings, we found that 50% of those surveyed earn over $40,000 USD, with only 3.3% earning less than $5,000 USD. The XC riders we received earning data from had the highest number of earners in the $100,000 to $250,000 pay bracket, with the second highest totals across the $50,000 to $100,000 USD and $250,000 to $500,000 USD ranges. XC racers were also more likely to have higher guaranteed salaries than the combined all-discipline totals at 40% of XC racers in the 80-100% range. 73.3% have over 60% of their income from a guaranteed salary, compared to 56.8% for Downhill and 67.7% in Enduro.
Junior/U21/U23 Racers
For this year's State of the Sport, we have also put the Junior, U21 and U23 earning data under the microscope to find out what the sport's future talents are paid. We think this is more important than ever 2023 saw the Junior Downhill and U23 racing broadcast live, offering race fans the first chance to watch the racing from home and bringing these riders into the spotlight.
Quick Stats:
Mode Wage: $0-$5,000 USD
Median Wage: $10,000 USD
Mode Wage: $0-$5,000 USD
Median Wage: $10,000 USD
Looking into total rider earnings, 36.4% of the young racers were between $0 and $5,000 USD, with 31.8% of respondents answering a different question stating they earned no wage from mountain biking. While it seems most young riders are not earning much, if any money, from racing, the next most popular earning brackets covered the $50,000 to $100,000 USD range. While we did observe 22.7% falling into that pay bracket, there were still 77.3% of younger racers earning below $30,000 USD.
The guaranteed salary for Junior/U21/U23 racers was also lower than the combined numbers for all riders, with only 9.1% having 80-100% of their income from a guaranteed salary. 50% of those surveyed have less than 40% of their income guaranteed.
Data Deep Dives
After taking a closer look at the income across each discipline and the Junior/U21/U23 racers, we decided to compare the data across questions to present a few different ways to interpret some of the responses we received around remuneration for State of the Sport.
First, we broke down the rider's total earnings data by their position in the overall standings last year. While there are some spikes, the earnings spread covers more of the top 40 than you might think. Just looking at the top 40 data, over 60% earn below $20,000 USD, but there are still 4.3% earning an income of $250,000 to $500,000 USD. The top five overall finishers saw the largest proportion of riders earning over $50,000 USD at 68% of those who were within the top five in the world last year. The best riders also had the highest proportion earning over $250,000 USD at 12%.
Next, we decided to do a similar breakdown as before, but this time with social media followers. While we saw total earnings spread out across riders inside the top 40 in the overall ranking, the social media followers present a more obvious trend. At least from our data, the social media following of a rider appears to have a closer tie to total earnings than the overall ranking position. In our breakdown of the earnings, the lowest bracket of $0 to $5,000 USD ends after riders have more than 25,000 followers with no riders who have built a following of over 100,000 earning less than $50,000 USD.
With ongoing issues in the industry, we added a new question to this year's State of the Sport survey, asking riders how they feel their total earnings will compare from 2023 to 2024. Across all responses, we found 21.5% believe they will earn less this year, with 28% hoping it will stay the same. Despite an uncertain future for many cycling brands, over 50% of riders surveyed believe their earnings will go up in 2024.
When we broke the responses down by discipline, it paints a more interesting picture of the health of each World Cup discipline, with only 6.7% of XC racers believing they will earn less this year. Comparatively, 22.8% of Downhill riders think they will earn less and 33.4% of enduro racers expect a drop in total earnings. Of the Enduro racers, there is the biggest proportion of riders thinking they will earn 'significantly less' at 18.2%, for Downhill this figure is 11.4% and there were no XC racers who believe they would see this level of drop.
Editor's Note We rely on athletes' trust to carry out this survey, any attempts to identify riders will be deleted from the comment section
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Must Read This Week
Should be a question
Would you quit your job and ride mountain bikes for a living if you were paid 50K USD per year after expenses?
How many people say yes?
Part of this is perspective, not to undervalue one sport versus another, but in some sports athletes are paid an obscene amount of money compared to others where being paid is akin to working for free.
It's not about fair, it's about what is realistic.
So, how many of you would drop everything you're doing to ride pro mountain bike in the category of your choosing for fifty thousand dollars a year?
I would.
Sell bikes get paid - that’s what sponsorships all about, it’s not a ‘work smarter not harder’ bullshit analogy, it’s a reality.
Is doing a cool shit as much hard work as training / racing / preparing to the level where you can beat all other competitors, people that are also trying as hard, probably not, no, could it be more risky, yes, could it require a more specific skillset, yes? Rampage vs World Cup etc.
I didn't make the comment in the first place though - you miss the bit where I asked who said anything about hard work.
Pretty hard for any of us to say that one person (we dont know) is working harder than another person (we dont know.)
Blows my mind some of you guys have so much insight into other peoples worlds to be able to make assumptions like that. Not sure why you arent using your crystal ball to give out lottery numbers, then again, maybe you are, maybe I'm just not on that list....
north Merica is overpriced (and overrated) anyways.
Obese countries have obese needs.
Value delivered to an employer comes in many forms. It’s not just about training hard and winning races.
I think to be completely thorough we would need a graph that index income with cost of living / GDP in the country of residence of the rider.
www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=50000&countryCode=USA&numAdults=1&numChildren=0
Did I contradict that idea somehow?
www.uktaxcalculators.co.uk/world/tax/compare/france/against/canada
On that subject, I don’t think any of the “developed” economies offer good value for money but some are definitely better than others.
Canada is a fairly high taxed nation, obviously with all its own different taxes.
You wanna buy a used car, gotta pay tax on that. You wanna sell your house and make some money, gotta pay tax on that, then pay tax on it again when you buy another house.
Theres no winning when it comes to playing the game of "how bad we have it", its silly.
Theres pros and cons to everything in this life
I'm not hating on plumbers in the slightest, just being real about the situation. I've spent more on bikes alone than the plumbing in my own house.
We are talking recreational things versus infrastructure. But my point is that a plumber has much more real world value with their skill set. Athletes just have a value because we as society are willing to pay so much for "entertainment". Which I think is dumb, but it is what it is.
And there are networks like chive TV that do show pro mtb, ski, skate and snowboarding videos at bars on the regular. The point im making is the social engagement involved with sports as a whole is pretty universal. Also, there is Decenders on consoles which is a freeride mtb game, there are also plenty of skate and snowboarding games too. Pipe Dream is the only plumbing came i can think of and that was 1989.
Once again, im not saying plumbers (or tradesmen) are useless, just saying athletes have a much higher roi and to many people provide much needed entertainment.
Also, I have a septic system and an old house—I pay my plumber quite a bit of money along with other tradesmen. If Loic starts doing work on pre-80s systems then he can get my money—not buying a Specialized until he specializes in hardline soldering.
When you represent yourself or your private team though any pay is dictated by the business that the sportsperson brings to the sponsor and in most cases female sport doesn't put anywhere near as many bums on seats / sell anywhere near as much product as men's sport does, especially in a male dominated sport.
Hopefully the future closes the gap and things progress, we should all try and pave the way for this to happen, but for now it is what it is, though I imagine a small handful of the fast women out there do pretty well in terms of pay, people like Tahnee and Vali, but Tahnee has a great social media presence too.
It's not personal; it's business. And if you would like it to be different, then start a brand and sponsor women only or sponsor women more than men. This is how the free market works.
If you'd suggest that some company should be a visionary and beat the market to it, then you may just be right... it may pay off for them. But expecting the market as a whole to shift on command because "fairness" is a little obtuse.
Life will be a lot easier for you if you make an effort to not be so offended over everything.
Standard disclaimer: women doing the same job with the same results of course deserve to be paid both fairly and equally to men in the same job with the same results. And vice versa. Of course.
Are you suggesting some form of unfairness in terms of female v male pay for professional cyclists from their sponsors?
What’s a ‘dude bros’?
Most of the comments devolved into arguing about the pay of male riders or arguing that women don't deserve to be paid as much men because "marketing." But how can any of you be arguing these things when the data as presented doesn't show you what men are making specifically or women.
Dictionary.com can help you with that.
I don’t think anyone is talking about ‘marketing’ as such by the way and I still don’t know what a ‘bros’ is but at least mixed in with the attempt at a condescending and stereotypical nonsense comment you helped me to understand the legitimate point you had.
And no athlete deserves to be paid as much as any other athlete unless they provide, in some way or another a comparative benefit to the business paying them, man or woman is irrelevant, why does one male get paid more than another - the same reason a male athlete gets paid more than a female athlete.
"Nobody values Susie less than Tom. They value the impact of Susie's marketing and the audience she speaks to less than Tom's."
"When you represent yourself or your private team though any pay is dictated by the business that the sportsperson brings to the sponsor and in most cases female sport doesn't put anywhere near as many bums on seats / sell anywhere near as much product as men's sport does, especially in a male dominated sport."
And if you go to the new article, you'll see plenty of it. To be clear, no one knows the actual impact a sponsored rider has on the sponsor's revenue. I'm fairly sure even the brands don't accurately measure this. What does one male win bring in? What about one social media post? So, how would you know that a woman's win (or take Vali, who won more than twice this season, unlike any man) didn't generate the same revenue? How does a brand correlate salary to revenue? Where's the ratio posted? If these brands are basing salary on potential revenue, there must be a calculation for it. If Vali makes 100k (she said that on a podcast) and an elite male rider makes 200k, he must bring in twice the revenue right? Where is that shown? How many more bikes do they expect to sell when a brand brings in a better rider? How much does a venue lose in ticket sales when a top male rider is injured and doesn't plan to race? Let me know because to be stating the opinion you have, you must know.
It's always really telling when men make several assumptions in favor of devaluing women with little evidence in support.
As I will say again, lets simplify this by removing gender - why does one male athlete get paid more than another even if they have similar performance? - Its all about company revenue, nothing else, not a patriarchal conspiracy.
As you discuss, there are many factors at play, results, social media reach etc but it all adds up to the potential value that athlete brings to the company - I assume with larger brands they do attempt to quantify this and this calculation is something we should have absolutely zero expectation to see as consumers.
What do I know as actual fact? - well more men ride mountainbikes, so more men buy mountainbikes, so men are better athletes to use to sell mountainbikes to other men, so male athletes get paid more than female athletes.
Its called reality, not some bullshit made-up 'gender pay gap unfairness' - this is sport and its unlike most other types of employment out there, its not the same as a male and female engineer of the doing the same job but getting paid a different amount.
Female mountainbikers likely get paid way more than they did a few years ago due to the fact more women are getting involved which is brilliant, and I imagine when a company believes a female athlete will sell as many bikes as a male athlete could the money will be waiting - I doubt its too far away realistically.
To be clear, they may in fact be wrong... women might actually sell bikes to men better than men sell bikes to men. But marketers are often times not that sophisticated in their understanding of consumer psychology (especially in niche markets like this where there is under-developed data) Also to be clear, I think men sell bikes to men better, but that's just an opinion that I personally hold. I could also be wrong.
I think the whole point that's worth making is that this isn't a personal attack on women. At worst, it's a miscalculation in total impact. At best, it's an accurate asseessment that the economics don't support the request.
And I think JustAnother makes a fair point. Why should Woman X make more than Woman Z? The fact that woman X is more valuable has nothing to do with the amount of woman she is. It's all impact. 1s and 0s. Data. There are no feelings here. As they say....don't hate the player; hate the game.
I'd recommend you check out the newer post where a guy made a really thoughtful comment that may help give you some perspective. Women are an untapped market.
I will say again, it's upto the sponsor to define the value an athlete brings to the company, not the public and this is the case male v male or male v female or female v female, it always has and always will be.
How the company defines the athletes worth is absolutely nothing to do with anyone except the company and the athlete in question, there never has, never will and never should be a drive for any form of artificial equality in terms of athlete / sponsorship pay, be that for the same or different gender of athlete.
As for the clothes bullshit - diving back into the old, tired stereotypes again? Are you assuming companies producing clothes for women are all designed by some kind of mens club in a mens only club room who aren't capable of consulting women or shock! including women in the design process, maybe even having a women designer? Surreely a woman wouldn't be capable of designing bad clothing for other women?
Lots of mens clothes dont fit me in the slightest, because I am not the 'typical build', just because riding clothes dont fit you its not just because of the evil patriarchy - Do you question every aspect of life in this way? Must be exhausting, grrrrrr men!
I asked her if she thinks they would try to take down the trousers of a man who they thought didn’t know anything about cars. An old grandpa or a posh-sounding man in a suit driving a Range Rover.
Yes, she answered.
They tried to fleece her but it wasn’t because she’s a woman, it was because according to their assessment she didn’t know anything about cars, and they were right. They would do the same to a person of any age or gender. It’s not part of a conspiracy against women, or heaven forbid “misogyny”.
This is a tired and frankly boring argument that doesn’t hold water.
Most women don’t ride bikes. The ones that do aren’t as good at it as men in general. The market is tiny and the women’s slice of the market is a tiny bit of that. Pretending otherwise doesn’t change the facts.
It’s like saying there’s no racism because several different races get treated differently, not just one.
It might be considered sexist but I can’t see any evidence of misogyny. And to be honest, she doesn’t know anything about cars so they were right!
If she had heard them saying they were going to do x because she’s a woman I might believe it. That didn’t happen. It’s just her assessment of what happened based on nothing. That’s not misogyny.
Garages taking advantage of women isn’t anything new and they don’t need to take advantage of a person because their knowledge of cars is low, it’s a choice and they do this to women as they perceive their knowledge of cars will be low as they are women - prejudice, discrimination, misogyny, whatever you want to call it.
It was your example, and it was a bloody terrible one.
Jk. Cool data set. Seems like people are getting paid better than last year so I guess this information is helping athletes in contract negotiations?
Gwin is earning more than $500k/yr.
I don't think a lot of people in the UK realise how low salaries are in comparison to elsewhere.
I’m 5’ 7” and I ride a medium Chilcotin 167. The sizing feels fine as I’m sure a medium or small here would feel fine
Weighed 37lbs with coil shock, 200mm rotors, DD tires, Cushcore in the rear.
Weighed 33 lbs without all of that.
Less than a lot of your boujie carbon bikes
I did as well, weird
Glitch in the matrix I guess!
like if you received 2 bikes from your sponsor is the cost of those included in this survey?
Im willing to bet the CRA would consider those items as part of total compensation, and would tax accordingly if they could.
What about racers that have food, travel, accommodation paid for, vs those that dont?
What about training, coaches, medical, therapists, managers, etc are any of those benefits accounted for in total compensation?
It's getting into the conversation what does a rider get "paid" vs. what is the total costs for team to support a rider. This is why you saw several teams shutdown recently.
Personally I’d support Redbull pulling the sponsorship and/or uninviting any athlete as ungrateful as the crank works crybabies.
I say that because if someone is making $500k+, that tells me there’s potential to make great money. Let’s assume that’s #1 on the podium all the time. #2 clearly has the close potential to make a similar amount of money, but if that isn’t happening, I can only assume a large portion of the reason for not making the same (or close to the same) amount is because of personal ability to negotiate.
Yes, luck is involved. Being in the right place at the right time.
Also, perhaps the #1 earner has access to more resources through corporate sponsors, like contract negotiation advisors, marketing/pr advisors, etc.
Putting yourself in the right conversations, in the right rooms, knowing the right people, and knowing how to manage relationships in a mutually-advantageous manner goes a lot further than actual results… in all areas of life. If you don’t already know this, you need to learn.
Also would be nice to compare racers VS youtubers...
Its an entertainment article, about how much young people earn from racing bicycles in the woods. How the hell does that matter to you?
Doughnut
Also, the question of where your money comes from? A percentage for sponsor, teams or event promotors.
Some riders would have individual sponsors, some would be race team riders and some like free riders would get paid by the event promotors..
How many in the bike industry (doing non matter what) are with a partner that has a real job with a respectable income?
That’s the real sponsorship question to make this lifestyle possible.
And the other lower salary segments seem too low. Might need to add a question on total compensation because other industry surveys would count bikes, gear, apparel, etc. under a compensation package.
So in layman’s terms. If you’re not a top ten rider, you better hope you can edit video. Also, winning the most races will not necessarily guarantee you are the best paid at what you do. But your exposure and ability to sell bikes and promote the brand is paramount. I wonder if having a social media presence is something that is now getting built into riders contracts.
“Just looking at the top 40 data, over 60% earn below $20,000 USD, but there are still 4.3% earning an income of $250,000 to $500,000 USD. The top five overall finishers saw the largest proportion of riders earning over $50,000 USD at 68% of those who were within the top five in the world last year. The best riders also had the highest proportion earning over $250,000 USD at 12%”.
Also
“At least from our data, the social media following of a rider appears to have a closer tie to total earnings than the overall ranking position”.
This mean that Downhill mountain biking as far as I can tell from the data, is one of the few sports in the world we’re having a strong media presence can ensure you have a greater income than success as an athlete.
They are doing pretty good especially because you know they also have endorsement deals. Which can push their income even higher.
But that is the minority.
As much as we love this sport to death this sport is just not big enough to draw in huge audiences like football or soccer.
It's tough for many riders but this is how it'll be until this sport gets a bigger audience.
If so, then the $50-100k range doesn’t seem *too bad - for a younger, single rider at least.
- Again the $50,000-$100,000 is pretty darn wide imo
For everyone else: share your salary, ask coworkers their salary, use this information as leverage. It really can only help you, and despite what your boss probably told you, in the US it is ILLEGAL for an employer to forbid you from discussing your salary: www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages
If you share salaries and it turns out NOBODY's making decent money, then it's time to start a union.
edit: maybe you meant just that comparison is the thief of joy. Thats true. But as @charliewentoutside pointed out, its really important that we talk about our wages with others in our lines of work. Being secretive about it benefits only the employers, who take advantage of us.
No offense to whoever made the charts.
These are all bar charts (very easy for humans to read and compare), they mostly have data labels, and they're all interactive so even colorblind folks can tell which bar is which.
Some different design choices could make it look sexier, but this communicates the relevant information pretty clearly, which should be the primary goal of any data viz.
Again, no offense to whoever made them.
So yeah, using similar colors would cause problems for a lot of people.
For example, look at the "Rider Total Earnings by Discipline" chart in this article. Imagine taking that same data and formatting it as a pie chart. Then, imagine removing all the numbers from both (axes can still be labeled, but each bar/pie slice is not labeled). If you then showed those two charts to ten people and asked them to guess the values in each, the guesses they made when looking at the stacked bar chart would be more accurate than the guesses they made based on the pie chart.
That's not to say pie charts are totally useless, but a bar chart like that is really always better because it's easier for humans to accurately understand length visually than angles.
Maybe you're a pie genius, I don't know. But statistically speaking, most people can interpret data more accurately and faster from a bar chart than they can from a pie chart. This isn't just my personal opinion – there's a reason data scientists tend to hate pie charts. See, for example: www.ataccama.com/blog/why-pie-charts-are-evil
Let's say I want to create a map with a pie chart located at each bike shop location. Pie sectors are the number of sales of XC, enduro, DH, gravel, and road bikes. Pie diameter shows total number of bikes sold. In my experience working with people that don't know data and need to know at a glance where to put marketing resources and which product to push, there's no substitute. They froth over such a map.
Note I don't work on data of bike sales, but something else. But the clients' froth is the same. And the most important outcome is the drool of the client who see at a glance what needs to be done.