In Spain we could do worse

If you are one of those who At the end of the salary they still have a month leftyou have probably wondered at some point in which corner of the world your monthly salary would be enough to cover your basic needs.

For that to happen, salaries They must be proportional to the cost of living in that country. This proportion is what defines whether employees in those countries have better or worse purchasing power. That is, if they can buy more or less things with their salaries.

To facilitate the visualization of these salary data, the portal VisualCapitalist has created an illustrative graph that represents the salary data of different countries in the world collected by the International Labor Organization. In this way, at a glance we can get an idea of ​​which countries in the world earn more wages and in which of them the purchasing power of their employees is lower.

Data adjusted for purchasing power parity

Before beginning to explain these data, it is worth emphasizing that the data it provides In its report the ILO is data purchasing power adjusted (PPP). That means that do not directly reflect the real average salary in the local currency of each country that workers receive, but rather a corrected figure to be able to compare how much that money really means in different economies.

This adjustment is necessary because the cost of living varies greatly between countries. A salary of 2,000 euros does not offer the same standard of living in Spain as in Switzerland, Luxembourg or the United States, where housing, food or transportation are usually much more expensive. The purchasing power parity try to correct that difference. Instead of just comparing how much a person earns, compare how many goods and services they can afford on that salary in each country.

A simple example: if one person earns 2,000 euros in Spain and another the equivalent of 3,500 euros in Switzerland, on paper the Swiss salary seems much higher. However, since prices are also much higher in Switzerland, the real difference in purchasing power It can be quite minor. The PPP adjustment serves precisely to put both salaries on a comparable scale.

Therefore, when the report shows PPP-adjusted salaries, what you are comparing is not so much the amount of salary you earn, but rather the real purchasing power between countries. That is to say, there is no point in having an apparently very high salary if the cost of living in that country is terribly expensive. In that case, the salary adjusted for purchasing power will be represented with a lower amount.

In which countries the salary increases the most

The graph leaves no room for doubt and Luxembourg leads the ranking where the salary yields the most with 9,307 dollars per month adjusted by PPP. Furthermore, it is the case that the Grand Duchy also has the highest minimum wage of Europe. Luxembourg surpasses Belgium in second place with $8,297 per month, and the Netherlands in third place with $7,234 as a parity-adjusted salary.

Fourth place on the list corresponds to Austria with 6,832 dollars per month, followed by the United States and Finland, which are in fifth and sixth position respectively with salaries of just under 6,300 dollars per month each. Four of the top five positions are European, which shows that the old continent has economies that offer monthly salaries proportional to the cost of living.

The countries where the salary yields less

The surprise of the ranking is Switzerland with adjusted salaries of $4,683 per month adjusted by PPP. Although the Alpine country has some of the highest real wages in the worldis placed behind Canada or Italy after adjustment for local costs.

That is to say, Swiss salaries are among the highest on the continent, but so are the prices of products, so purchasing capacity is reduced of its citizens. The high price of housing, services and consumer goods significantly reduces the real value of the Swiss salary.

There is a large gap between the top positions on the list and the countries that are below the Top 10. For example, France is in twenty-fifth position with an adjusted salary of $3,064, which is a salary three times lower than its neighbor Luxembourg.

The real average salary in France is around 3,650 euros per month, which leaves the PPP-adjusted salary slightly below. This indicates that the cost of living is slightly higher than the purchasing power of their salaries, so, overall, living in France is somewhat more expensive than living in Luxembourg.

The same happens with Poland and Greece, which with adjusted salaries of 3,082 and 3,546 dollars respectively, close the list of countries in which it is most expensive to live for their workers.

Spain’s wage stagnation

With 5,166 dollars per month adjusted by PPP, Spain is located in the upper-middle zone of the table with just 56% of the purchasing power of the world leader.

The case of Spain is the opposite of that presented in France and, on a smaller scale, follows in the footsteps of Luxembourg. The adjusted salary doubles the real average salary which, according to data from the Adecco Salary Monitor 2025is around 2,048 euros.

This indicates that the salary in Spain allows the reference shopping basket to be assumed without major problems. That is, the purchasing power of employees in Spain allows them to make ends meet and leaves a certain margin for savings.

However, the price of housing in Spain continues to be the main drag on purchasing power of the Spanish. For this reason, salaries in Spain have not climbed positions, despite the latest increases in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage that has moved the average salary upwards of the country.

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Image | VisualCapitalist