Germany.
At the end we compare numbers as life itself can´t be compared. Living in a certain town and certain country. Costs of living vary from country to region.
I choose to freelance as it means more income and less social security. I´m not having paid vacations plus the bonuses of an employee.
I never worked more than 40 hours/week though. Not as a freelancer, not as an employee. This is not game development. Nonetheless I worked for a agency recently where the employees got jobs like: here are 30 layouts for a Magento shop (by a designer who neither knows responsive design nor shop systems) and the template needs to be done by the end of the week. I´m not making this up. Companies like this are not running sustainable and you IMHO you should get out there as quickly as possible.
I started developing ecommerce sites back in 2008. Worked for a specialised web agency (size: around 20 people) back then and got around 1600 Euros/month net, after taxes. I don´t remember the precise numbers any more.
I started freelancing in 2011 and got a higher income (not in the first year though). I served mainly small businesses. I still have the numbers. They are net, post taxes and health insurance already paid.
2011 15045 Euros
2012 34826 Euros
2013 28320 Euros
2014 46582 Euros
Decided to travel afterwards and give a regular job a try when I came back. Got a position as PHP / Web developer at a small agency (size: 10-15 people). Now relocated to the south of Germany. That would have been
2016 48000 Euros pre-tax or 25560 Euros net
Probably a small bonus added at the end of the year as well. I never found. I quit after a few months as I figured out that being employed is not my cup of tea. I earned about 30.800 Euros pre-tax. You can get some of your taxes back if you don´t work a full year as an employee.
Fast forward: back to freelancing again. Earning between 65 and 80 Euros per hour now, pre taxes Can´t say how much I will earn this year cause I didn´t work last year at all and only a few months this year. Which is sufficient to pay rent (and have enough time to witness the first months on earth of my son).
Developing applications with PHP and JavaScript frameworks. No more small customers, working on full-time project for a couple of months.
There have been studies posted at German portal heise.de in the last months claiming software freelancers in Germany make an average of 91 Euros/hour. I somehow doubt that. Or: depends who you ask and how big your sample is.
Not me and I´m fine with what I make. Demand for freelance developers is high right now, I get lots of requests. How about you guys? :)