Countries With The Lowest Average Salaries in 2024

The Lowest Average Salaries by Country in 2024

At the bottom of CEOWORLD Magazine’s 2024 list of 196 countries, Lesotho is last with an average wage of US$24 a month. Angola is 195th on $27, Malawi 194th on $31, Mali on $34 and North Korea on $37. Niger, Madagascar and Liberia are all published at $47, yet the magazine gives them three different ranks, 190th, 189th and 188th; on the figures they share a place. The comparison rows run from Pakistan, 145th on $163, to Indonesia, 120th on $344. At the top of the same list, Switzerland pays $8,111, as the countries with the highest average salaries in 2024 shows, and the best-paid Asian rows are in the highest average salaries in Asia.

An Average That Falls Below the Legal Minimum

This is a magazine’s compilation of gross wages converted at market exchange rates, read on 12 January 2025 and not updated since. Some of its figures are hard to square with other records. The ILO’s 2024 statutory minimum wage data gives Liberia’s minimum for unskilled workers as US$91 a month, set in dollars, almost twice the $47 the list calls Liberia’s average.

One reason a national average can look so low is that few people earn a wage at all. In the ILO’s 2024 self-employment rate, 89.7% of Niger’s workers and 88.5% of Madagascar’s work for themselves or in a family business. Their earnings appear in no payroll.

Having a Job Is Not Enough to Escape Poverty

The ILO’s working poverty rate counts people with jobs who live in households below the extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day. Its 2024 figures for the bottom of this chart are stark: Madagascar 86.291%, the highest reading of 113, Malawi 72.818%, Niger 51.872%, Angola 40.022%, Mali 35.292%, Lesotho 33.734% and Liberia 33.606%. Because poverty is measured by household, a worker can earn a fair wage and still be counted if many people depend on it.

What Rs 37,000 a Month Buys in Pakistan

Pakistan sits well above the bottom ten, but its numbers show how close an average can be to a floor. The legal minimum for unskilled workers was Rs 32,000 a month in 2023 and rose to Rs 37,000 from 1 July 2024, the figure the ILO records. At about 280 rupees to the dollar, Rs 37,000 is roughly US$132, not far below the list’s $163 average.

Dollars understate what rupees buy. Pakistan’s price level of household consumption in 2023 was 0.20, the third lowest of 185 in the Penn World Table, which is why the ILO puts the same minimum at 570.451 international dollars. Even so, 15.564% of Pakistan’s employed lived in extreme poverty in 2024, and the ILO’s 2024 estimate puts 36.5% of its workers in agriculture.

Low Pay Starts With Low Output

The bottom of the wage list is also the bottom of the output tables. In the ILO’s 2024 labour productivity per hour worked, North Korea, Liberia, Madagascar and Niger hold four of the six lowest readings of 182, each under 2.10 international dollars an hour. The World Bank’s GDP per person employed counts output, not pay, and in 2024 Madagascar, Liberia and Niger hold three of its six lowest readings of 171. Switzerland’s output per hour is 84.57.