Can learning a foreign language help you earn more money?

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MosaLingua

7 min readJul 28, 2016

Multiple studies over the years have shown that the ability to speak multiple languages gives us many advantages in different areas of life, including making it easier to forge friendships, increasing the quality of travel experiences, delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease…
But that’s not all! Many people believe that speaking more than one language can increase your net worth. Some leaders in the subject even talk about learning a new language and the subsequent Return On Investment (ROI).

So, we’ve suggested that speaking more than one language could seriously boost our employment opportunities, especially when compared to those who only speak one language, making us greater assets for companies, and even giving us a leg up when striving to earn a heftier salary. Now it’s time to find the sweet spot between languages and your career…

Languages and your career: catching the employer’s eye

It’s impossible to deny that foreign languages are a valuable addition to any C.V (check out to showcase your language skills on your CV). Companies the world over are growing and expanding across borders while communicating directly with their collaborators and customers in their native languages. This is especially true for companies that run their businesses through branches based in other countries.

MosaLingua is no exception. This close connection between language and career allows team members from Spain, Italy, Portugal, USA and Germany to work together, because everyone knows at least one foreign language and is in the process of learning a new one (or two)!

So, how exactly does speaking a foreign language help improve our level of employability? And while we’re at it, what is employability?

Employability is a combination of our qualifications, knowledge, and know-how… Basically, employability is what differentiates us from the rest of the labor market. This term was at the core of a project conducted by CIEP and co-financed by the European Commission in 2014, dealing with two things that interest us greatly: “Languages and employability”.

Part of the project included conducting surveys at 801 companies in order to find out whether languages are important to them during their continuous recruitment process. The results were not surprising, stating that modern languages are an asset for recruitment, career opportunities and promotions.

Check out some more results below*:

When recruiting, 1 out of 2 companies seek employees who speak one or more modern languages. When comparing two qualified candidates, knowing a foreign language definitely makes the difference.
For 2 out of 5 job openings, mastering at least two foreign languages is a requirement.
According to half of the companies surveyed, promotion, mobility and remuneration are highlighted as the key competencies that knowing foreign languages provide in a professional context.

What we’ve learned here is pretty amazing and straightforward. To start, knowing another language can help you land a job. Add to that the fact that it can also help increase your starting salary, and we have gained some valuable financial and professional advice.

I for one can certainly relate because knowing more than one language helped me at the beginning of my career. I leveraged my polyglot status to negotiate better salaries.

Languages and your career: the financial advantage of knowing foreign languages

Can we then conclude that learning a language proves to be a financially sound investment?

Robert Lane Greene, a journalist for The Economist, delved into this question for his article, Johnson: what is a foreign language worth? He tried to work out the ROI (Return on Investment) associated with learning a language and found that Albert Saiz, an economist at MIT, had calculated that the annual bonus earned by an American who speaks a foreign language is 2%.

In other words, for an American who makes $30,000 a year, this 2% bonus only amounts to $600. This is not terribly significant according to the author but would represent a return on investment nonetheless. Below are a few more calculated averages:

Spanish results in a 1.5% bonus
French results in a 2.3% bonus
And German brings in a 3.8% bonus

Robert Lane Greene points out, however, that the more important issues at hand are lifetime earnings and compound interest. Consider for a moment that:

a recent university graduate will probably earn a starting salary of $45,000 (as apposed to 30,000)
assume that this graduate will receive a 1% annual raise
and an average real return of 2% over a period of 40 years

What does this leave us with? The gain is actually something more along the lines of $67,000 at the time of retirement. And this is just an average because, going back to what Albert Saiz found, not all languages are created equal. If this graduate had chosen to learn:

Spanish, he would have $51,000 by the time he retires
French, $77,000
German, a substantial $128,000

So the answer is clear, learning a foreign language is a good idea for landing a job and it’s also a good investment towards a salary that will help you accumulate more wealth in the long term.

But how does this connection between languages and career work and why is knowing a foreign language worth so much?

I bet you were asking yourself these very questions as well as wondering why it is that knowing German (for an American) translates into a better salary than knowing Spanish.

The economics

Germany is a global economic power, so being able to speak German is more interesting from an economical perspective for many companies. This is compared to knowing a language, like Spanish, which isn’t necessarily as strong. In many instances, American companies tend to work more with German companies, and are thus in a position to hire more individuals who are fluent in German.

The law of supply and demand

In the United States, Latinos who are fluent in Spanish (bilingual) are not rare as opposed to Americans who are fluent in German. Speaking German is simply an atypical asset in the eyes of companies. Therefore, in the United Sates, a bilingual who knows German tends to earn more simply because knowing German is a relatively rare and sought after skill. The greater the supply, the lower the demand, and the rarer the supply, the greater the demand. So knowing a foreign language becomes an asset worth its weight in gold: it has the power to differentiate you from other candidates who may only speak one language.

When it comes to doing business around the world, English speakers don’t tend to encounter too many language barriers given that English is the international language of business. However, learning additional languages still holds a significant financial interest. According to a study by James Foreman-Peck from Cardiff Business School, the relatively low number of people who are learning foreign languages costs Great Britain £48 billion a year! That’s 3.5% of the GDP!

Our advice: if you want to earn a better salary, focus on learning a language that is both rare and in demand.

A few words on exportation

Being adaptable can be a good characteristic to have, so it’s a good idea to adapt to demand. Consider that the kinds of companies that are most likely to hire you for your language skills are multinationals and the idea is to identify which of these you’ll be able to communicate with. So, which language should you focus on learning? Look at the world’s largest exporting countries! It could be both rare and interesting to speak the language of a country that is known for exporting a lot of goods, such as many Asian countries.

At MosaLingua, we understand that many users are motivated to learn languages simply for pleasure or an upcoming trip. Many users also use languages for school or work. And now it’s undeniable that languages and career are linked and most importantly, the former improves the latter .
But don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that money should be the ultimate goal or motivation for learning a new language — even though that is an added bonus! Plus, there is no guarantee that learning a new language will result in a better salary. There’s more to it that that and more valuable than money, speaking another language can enrich your life in many other ways!

Do you think there are other factors that create this connection between languages and career? What’s been your experience with this? We’d love to hear from you!

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