Are these figures live?

They are recomputed from the datasets on every build — healthcare last updated 2026-09-07, housing 2026-09-01 — and come from the same engines as the site's free tools, so this page and the tool can never disagree.

Why are some countries missing?

A country is left out when the dataset has no figure for it, never given a zero. A zero would sort to the top of a cheapest-first list and rank a country first for having no data — which is exactly backwards.

Where does a hire cost the employer least on top of salary?

New Zealand leads on employer contributions at 0.0%; Hungary is last of the 15 shown at 13.0%.

A salary is not what a hire costs. On top of it the employer pays its own social contributions, and the rate ranges from nothing at all to more than a third of gross pay. For a remote team spread across countries, it is the difference between two offers at the same salary costing very different amounts.

The figures are OECD's, for a single earner with no children at the average wage. Countries with contribution ceilings look cheaper at high pay than this flat rate suggests, and mandatory private schemes and benefits in kind are not included.

Only the 37 countries on this site that OECD measures are ranked. The rest are absent rather than shown as zero — a country we cannot see is not a country with no payroll tax. New Zealand's zero is real: it funds social insurance from general taxation and levies no employer contribution.

#	Country	Employer contributions	Note
1	🇳🇿 New Zealand	0.0%	wedge 20.8%
2	🇨🇱 Chile	0.4%	wedge 7.5%
3	🇩🇰 Denmark	0.7%	wedge 35.8%
4	🇱🇹 Lithuania	1.8%	wedge 39.8%
5	🇦🇺 Australia	6.1%	wedge 27.9%
6	🇮🇱 Israel	6.3%	wedge 26.1%
7	🇮🇸 Iceland	6.3%	wedge 31.5%
8	🇨🇭 Switzerland	6.4%	wedge 23.0%
9	🇺🇸 United States	8.1%	wedge 30.0%
10	🇨🇦 Canada	9.6%	wedge 32.1%
11	🇲🇽 Mexico	10.8%	wedge 21.6%
12	🇰🇷 South Korea	11.1%	wedge 24.9%
13	🇮🇪 Ireland	11.2%	wedge 32.6%
14	🇳🇱 Netherlands	12.6%	wedge 35.9%
15	🇭🇺 Hungary	13.0%	wedge 41.1%

How this is worked out: Employer social security contributions as a fraction of gross wage for a single person with no children at 100% of the average wage, from OECD Taxing Wages via the OECD public SDMX API, lowest first. OECD's tax wedge (total labour taxes over total labour cost) is shown beside it. Countries OECD does not cover are excluded, never scored zero. Estimates for comparison, not advice.

Check your own numbers

A ranking is a starting point, not an answer — your income, household and destination change the order. The Employer cost of a hire runs the same engine against your own figures, and every country above links to its own page.

Check your own numbers

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