Average wages in the OECD, 2025: what a full-time salary is worth in purchasing power

The average annual wage per full-time equivalent employee across the OECD was 64,803 US dollars in 2025, measured at purchasing power parity (PPP) and at 2025 prices. In real terms, it was 1.2% higher than in 2024. The figures come from the OECD dataset on average annual wages, last updated on 5 October 2026, which has 2025 data for 33 of the 38 member countries.

What this number is, and what it is not

The OECD takes the total wage bill from national accounts and divides it by the average number of employees, then adjusts for hours so that part-time work counts at a full-time equivalent rate. The result covers the whole economy and includes basic pay, overtime and bonuses.

That makes it an average, not a median: high salaries pull it up, so it does not tell you what the employee in the middle of the pay scale earns. It is also gross pay, before income tax and social contributions, not what reaches a bank account. To see how much of a gross wage a worker keeps, see our article on how much of your salary you keep. That article uses a different OECD measure of the average wage, from the Taxing Wages report, so its figures differ from the ones here.

The first column converts each country's wage with PPPs for household consumption, which correct for differences in prices between countries. A dollar in the table buys roughly the same basket of goods and services everywhere. The second column is the wage in the national currency at current prices. The last column is the change from 2024 after inflation, calculated from the OECD series at constant prices.

The table

Average annual wage per full-time equivalent employee, 2025, ranked by the PPP figure.

The gap between the top and the bottom

Luxembourg had the highest average wage, 98,530 dollars at PPP, followed by Switzerland (92,285) and the United States (86,977). The Netherlands and Belgium were just above 80,000.

At the other end, Mexico had the lowest figure, 24,463, about a quarter of Luxembourg's. Greece (32,412), Slovakia (37,832) and Hungary (39,145) were the other countries below 40,000. Thirteen countries were above the OECD average and twenty were below it.

Because the figures are at PPP, the gaps already take into account that prices are lower in some countries. Even after that correction, a full-time wage in Luxembourg buys about four times as much as one in Mexico.

Where real wages rose and where they fell

Real wages, meaning wages after inflation, grew in 31 of the 33 countries in 2025. They fell in Japan (by 0.5%) and in Greece (by 0.3%).

The fastest growth was in central and eastern Europe. Real wages rose 5.9% in Lithuania, 5.5% in Slovenia, 4.6% in Poland and 3.9% in Czechia. Hungary (3.4%) and Latvia (3.3%) followed. All six are still below the OECD average in level, so faster growth there narrows the distance to it.

In some of the highest paying countries, real wages barely moved: 0.1% in Switzerland, 0.2% in Canada and 0.3% in Denmark.

National currency figures

The national currency column shows what the wage looks like in each country's own money, for example 54,840 euros in Germany or 5,185,703 yen in Japan. These figures are not comparable with each other without a conversion, and the PPP column is that conversion. For the legal pay floor rather than the average, see our article on minimum wages in Europe.

Notes on the data

• Members without 2025 data. The dataset has no 2025 figure for Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Iceland or Türkiye. Their latest figures are for earlier years and are not shown, so that every row refers to 2025.
• Part-time work. Part-time employees count at a full-time equivalent rate. The OECD notes that this tends to make its figures lower than averages taken from full-time jobs only.
• Your own salary. An average for the whole economy says little about pay in a given profession, city or level of experience.

Country profiles: Luxembourg, Switzerland, United States, Mexico, Greece, Lithuania, Japan and Poland.