There are many reasons for why salaries vary between countries: economic development, cost of living, labor laws, and a variety of other factors. Because of these variables, it can be difficult to gauge the general level of income around the world.

With this in mind, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized the average annual salaries of 30 OECD countries, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). This means that the values listed have taken into account the differences in cost of living and inflation between countries.

Data and Key Takeaways

This data was sourced from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), an international organization that promotes policies to improve economic and social well-being. It has 38 member countries, though in this instance, data for all of them was not available.

Rank
Country
Average Annual Salary
(USD, PPP adjusted)
1
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
78,310
2
🇺🇸 U.S.
77,463
3
🇨🇭 Switzerland
72,993
4
🇧🇪 Belgium
64,848
5
🇩🇰 Denmark
64,127
6
🇦🇹 Austria
63,802
7
🇳🇱 Netherlands
63,225
8
🇦🇺 Australia
59,408
9
🇨🇦 Canada
59,050
10
🇩🇪 Germany
58,940
11
🇬🇧 UK
53,985
12
🇳🇴 Norway
53,756
13
🇫🇷 France
52,764
14
🇮🇪 Ireland
52,243
15
🇫🇮 Finland
51,836
16
🇸🇪 Sweden
50,407
17
🇰🇷 South Korea
48,922
18
🇸🇮 Slovenia
47,204
19
🇮🇹 Italy
44,893
20
🇮🇱 Israel
44,156
21
🇪🇸 Spain
42,859
22
🇯🇵 Japan
41,509
23
🇵🇱 Poland
36,897
24
🇪🇪 Estonia
34,705
25
🇨🇿 Czechia
33,476
26
🇵🇹 Portugal
31,922
27
🇭🇺 Hungary
28,475
28
🇸🇰 Slovak Republic
26,263
29
🇬🇷 Greece
25,979
30
🇲🇽 Mexico
16,685

From this dataset we can see that Luxembourg, the U.S., and Switzerland offer the highest average annual salaries.

All three of these countries are highly developed economies with well-established service sectors, which typically lead to more high-paying jobs. The cost of living in these countries is also relatively high, necessitating higher wages to maintain a standard quality of life.

At the other end of this ranking, Mexico and Greece have the lowest average salaries. In Mexico’s case, the country’s economy has a large portion of lower-wage jobs, particularly in agriculture and manufacturing.

Greece, on the other hand, has struggled with consistently high unemployment since the 2008 global financial crisis. This puts downward pressure on wages because there is a surplus of labor.

If you enjoy graphics like these, check out Visualized: The Most (and Least) Expensive Cities to Live In.