List of countries by average wage

The average wage is a measure for the financial well-being of a country's inhabitants. A similar measure is GDP per capita. However, GDP (on the income side) = compensation of employees + gross operating surplus/mixed income + taxes on production - subsidies. This way, various components increase the GDP that are not directly contributing to the well-being of citizens. In particular, the gross operating surplus consists of corporate profits, which is money that companies save, reinvest, or pay to their shareholders in the form of dividends (who may be located outside the country). Even in the case of reinvestment, much of the money moves offshore, especially with larger multi-national companies. In order to measure the part of the income generated by the domestic economy that is actually earned by the employees, it is better to break down the GDP to its components and consider only wages and salaries.

Methodology

The data presented represents full-time average annual gross wages and salaries in the entire economy of selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. The figure is derived by taking the national accounts aggregate of wages and salaries, dividing them by the national accounts aggregate for average wage and salary employment, and multiplying it by the ratio of average weekly working hours per full-time employee to average weekly working hours for all employees. The resulting estimates correspond to average annual wages per full-time equivalent dependent employee. The calculations were made using the latest data from the OECD. Wages and salaries are a component of GDP on the income side.

Since PPP conversion is a universally accepted way to compare income (including wages), the data listed are in PPPs (for private consumption).

According to the OECD, the figures here may not match that of other sources for a variety of reasons; National Accounts (NA) wages include both full-time and part-time workers at a full-time equivalent rate. This is likely to reduce the level of NA wages (as compared to average earnings from only full-time jobs) since average wages for part-time workers, even at a full-time equivalent rate, are lower than average earnings from full-time jobs; The lower level of NA wages for certain countries such as Germany, as compared to average earnings reported from some well-known surveys, probably reflects the inclusion of employees in mini (part-time) jobs and apprenticeships. Low-paid apprentices are counted as employees in national accounts and labour force surveys, but are omitted from structure of earnings surveys; Some alternative estimates, for instance those based on labour cost surveys, are limited to establishments with ten or more employees. These surveys tend to overstate average wages, relative to the more comprehensive coverage of NA wages.

Average disposable wage of OECD members

Unlike the gross wage, which can be an inaccurate indicator of the well-being of a citizen since it does not represent the full amount of money the worker will be left to consume on goods or services, the disposable wage excludes compulsory deductions such as income tax, municipal tax, provincial/state income tax, social security (pension plan, medicare) and compulsory insurance, thus measuring only the direct earnings of the citizen. The list below has compulsory deductions applied with rates obtained from the 2010 OECD Tax Database, which includes figures for all personal compulsory payments assuming that the citizen is single with no children, with an income level 100% of the average wage. The gross employment income are shown for reference and dollars earned per hour have been calculated with the 2010 or latest figures of annual working hours from the OECD StatExtracts. All monetary values are based on the OECD's purchasing power parity exchange rates.

Rank	Country	Disposable $ 2010	Disposable $ growth	Disposable $ per hour	Compulsory deduction	Gross $ 2010
1	United States	40,560	271	22.81	22.9%	52,607
2	Luxembourg	38,301	-45	23.70	26.5%	52,110
3	Ireland	38,128	422	22.91	21.8%	48,757
4	Switzerland	35,265	-245	21.50	29.2%	49,810
5	Australia	33,359	544	19.79	21.6%	42,550
6	United Kingdom	32,786	-664	19.91	25.5%	44,008
7	Canada	32,047	336	18.83	22.2%	41,191
8	Norway	31,489	558	22.27	28.7%	44,164
9	South Korea	29,268	1,311	13.35	11.9%	33,221
10	Netherlands	28,773	-101	20.90	37.0%	45,671
11	Austria	28,269	68	17.81	32.7%	42,005
12	Sweden	27,656	45	17.03	24.9%	36,826
13	France	27,526	229	17.71	27.8%	38,124
14	Japan	26,849	540	15.49	20.8%	33,900
15	Denmark	26,562	176	17.04	38.5%	43,190
16	Spain	26,386	-198	15.87	21.6%	33,656
17	Finland	25,316	275	14.92	29.1%	35,707
18	Belgium	24,910	-312	16.06	42.1%	43,023
19	Germany	23,302	45	16.42	39.2%	38,325
20	Italy	22,925	176	12.89	29.8%	32,657
21	Greece	22,317	-1,622	10.58	18.8%	27,484
22	Portugal	17,866	-50	10.42	22.9%	23,173
23	Czech Republic	15,955	126	8.19	22.5%	20,587
24	Slovakia	14,694	540	8.23	21.5%	18,719
25	Poland	13,197	109	6.81	28.2%	18,380
26	Hungary	12,843	-340	6.55	31.2%	18,667

See also

• International Ranking of Household Income

• List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita

• OECD

• Wages and Salaries

External links

• GDP per capita by country Interactive GDP chart that allows filtering by various national groupings (such as NATO, EU, BRIC, ASEAN etc.)