Countries With The Highest Average Salaries in 2024

The Highest Average Salaries by Country in 2024

On CEOWORLD Magazine’s 2024 list of 196 countries, Switzerland pays the highest average wage: US$8,111 a month before tax. Luxembourg is second on $6,633, the United States third on $6,455, and Iceland only $14 behind it on $6,441. Norway, Denmark, Canada, Greenland (listed apart from Denmark), Ireland and the Netherlands complete the ten, the Netherlands on $4,581. The six rows added underneath run from Australia, 13th on $4,218, to India, 85th on $628. Switzerland’s figure is almost 13 times India’s.

A Magazine’s List, Read in January 2025

This is a business magazine’s compilation, not one statistical office’s survey. Each figure is a gross monthly wage converted to dollars at the exchange rate of the day, and the chart shows the list as it stood when it was read on 12 January 2025. It is not updated. The other end of the same list is in the countries with the lowest average salaries in 2024, and its Asian rows in the highest average salaries in Asia.

Exchange Rates Flatter the Most Expensive Countries

A dollar does not buy the same thing everywhere. In the Penn World Table’s 2023 figures, Switzerland’s price level of household consumption is 1.41, higher than for any other country on this chart that the table covers, against 1.07 for the United States and 0.25 for India.

The ILO’s average monthly earnings of employees takes prices into account by converting at purchasing power parities. In its 2024 edition Luxembourg has the highest reading of 75, at 9,306.956 international dollars, and Switzerland falls to ninth on 5,757.534, behind the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and the United States among others. India reads 1,045.971, so the Swiss figure is about five and a half times India’s, not 13. The ILO counts employees only, which leaves out the self-employed.

Pay Follows Output per Hour

Wages can only be paid out of what work produces. In the ILO’s 2024 labour productivity per hour worked, Luxembourg has the highest reading of 182 at 158.81 international dollars an hour, Norway the third highest and Switzerland the tenth, at 84.57. Every one of the chart’s top ten that the ILO covers is among its 27 highest readings. India produces 10.28 an hour. The World Bank’s GDP per person employed, which measures output rather than pay, agrees: Luxembourg, Ireland and Norway hold three of its six highest readings of 171 in 2024.

Ireland’s Output Does Not Reach Its Pay

Ireland is the exception that shows the limit. Its output per hour, 152.28, is the second highest of 182, yet its wage places ninth on the list. The ILO’s labour income share explains the gap: in 2024 only 31.571% of Ireland’s national income went to workers, one of the 16 lowest readings of 182. Irish GDP is swollen by profits that multinational companies book there. Switzerland is the opposite case, with a share of 71.282%, the second highest of 182, though the ILO marks that 2024 figure as a model-based extrapolation.