List of countries by employee compensation (per hour)

The compensation of employees per hour is a measure for the financial well-being of a country's inhabitants. A similar measure is the GDP per capita. However, gross domestic product (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.

Average compensation per hour

The following table lists the average compensation of employees per hour in purchasing power parity (PPP) in the respective countries, which includes wages and salaries as well as employers social contributions. The figures are calculated from data published by the OECD.^[1] Note that some OECD countries are not listed, like Japan and the UK.

Rank	Country	2007 $ PPP
1	USA	$33.0
2	Netherlands	$31.5
3	Norway	$31.1
4	France	$30.4
5	Austria	$28.0
6	Germany	$27.8
7	Sweden	$26.2
8	Denmark	$24.8
9	Canada	$23.5
10	Finland	$22.6
11	Ireland	$22.5
12	Italy	$22.5
13	Poland	$22.1
14	Spain	$21.9
15	Cyprus	$17.7

References

1. ^ http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx

See also

• List of countries by average wages
• List of countries by monthly average wage
• List of sovereign states in Europe by net average wage
• International ranking of household income
• List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita
• OECD
• Wages and salaries