Median Salaries by Country 2026: Gross, Net, and PPP-Adjusted

When comparing salaries across countries, the gross figure is almost irrelevant. What matters is how much you keep after tax and how far that money goes. A $66,000 salary in Denmark sounds impressive until you discover 58 % of it reaches your account — and Copenhagen is one of Europe’s most expensive cities. A $53,000 salary in Singapore, meanwhile, leaves 77 % in your pocket in one of the highest-quality cities in the world.

This page publishes WhereNext’s open dataset of median annual salaries for 40 countries, covering gross, net (domestic resident tax), PPP-adjusted net, and months of local costs covered by one year’s net pay. All figures use Q1 2026 FX and World Bank ICP 2021 PPP. The underlying data is CC BY 4.0 — you can download the full dataset as JSON or CSV.

Caveat before you read: these are national population medians. A tech worker in Zurich earns three times the Swiss national median. A rural subsistence farmer in Vietnam earns less. The numbers here answer the question “what does a typical employed person in this country take home?” — not “what could I earn there?” For profession-specific estimates, use the Salary Calculator.

What Is the Median Net Salary by Country?

The Efficiency Question: Who Keeps the Most?

Gross salary is a vanity metric. What matters is the effective take-home rate — what percentage of gross reaches your bank account after income tax and mandatory social contributions. The variation across our 40-country dataset is striking:

• Australia: 89%— the dataset’s most tax-efficient high-income country. A $44,172 gross becomes $39,133 net. Low social contributions and a tax-free threshold explain the edge over Europe.
• Switzerland: 85% — high gross ($85,714) and high retention combine. Note that Swiss cantons vary significantly; Zug residents keep more, Zurich residents keep less than the national median.
• Singapore: 77%— CPF contributions (typically 20% employee) are technically deferred savings, not a tax, which is why Singapore’s retained rate looks more moderate than some expect. The CPF balance is yours on retirement.
• Belgium: 50%— the starkest gap in the dataset. Belgium’s combination of high marginal rates, social security contributions, and municipal taxes means the median worker keeps barely half of their gross. France (69%) and Germany (65%) are more moderate but still significantly below the Anglo-sphere.
• Denmark: 58% — often cited as a high-tax country, but the median worker receives substantial healthcare, childcare, and education benefits funded by those taxes — a trade-off not captured by the retention percentage alone.

PPP-Adjusted Net: Where Does Salary Actually Go Furthest?

Purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusts for the local price level, answering the question: “how much US buying power does this salary represent?” The rankings shift meaningfully when you apply PPP:

• Switzerland: $55,000 PPP net — still leads despite high local prices. Geneva groceries and Zurich rents are expensive, but income is high enough to dominate.
• Singapore: $54,994 PPP net— effectively tied with Switzerland in real purchasing power despite a $32,000 lower nominal net salary. Singapore’s PPP conversion factor is exceptionally favourable.
• UAE: $40,788 PPP net — 0% income tax on salaries makes the UAE a strong PPP performer; the catch is that salaries are skewed toward high-paying expatriate roles and the national median may not reflect what most residents earn.
• Iceland: $34,701 PPP net— nominal net of $42,082 is high, but Iceland’s extreme price level (one of the world’s most expensive countries) significantly erodes real purchasing power.

Months of Local Costs: The Relocation Relevance Score

For relocation decisions, the most actionable metric is how many months of local living costs the median net salary covers in one year. A value above 12 means the median worker has surplus — below 12 means the median salary does not cover a year of median lifestyle:

• Switzerland: 18.3 months — despite high prices, Swiss salaries are high enough that the median worker saves substantially.
• Singapore: 18.2 months— nearly identical to Switzerland, confirming Singapore’s strong value proposition for earning and saving.
• United States: 15.7 months — US cost of living varies enormously by state, but the national median earner generates meaningful surplus.
• Belgium: 8.5 months— the median Belgian worker’s net pay covers less than nine months of Belgian living costs. This explains why Belgium has one of Europe’s higher rates of dual-income households.
• Vietnam: 2.7 months— the lowest in the dataset. The median Vietnamese salary of $2,391/year in a country where even modest living costs run $800–$1,200/month illustrates the gap between expat and local economic realities.

What This Means for Relocation Decisions

These medians are population-level statistics; your situation as a relocating professional will differ in four important ways:

1. Your profession pays above or below the median. A software engineer in Portugal earns 40–70 % above the national median. A teacher in Switzerland earns close to it. Use the Salary Calculator with your specific profession for a more accurate comparison.
2. Local resident tax ≠ expat tax.Most countries have special regimes for incoming professionals: Portugal’s IFICI, Spain’s Beckham Law, the Netherlands’ 30% ruling, Italy’s Impatriati. The net figures here use domestic resident tax; your effective rate may be significantly lower. See the Expat Tax Rates dataset.
3. Data vintage matters. These figures span 2022–2024. Countries with high nominal inflation (Turkey, Brazil) may show materially different numbers today. Each row includes a dataYear field — check it before citing.
4. The national median masks cities.Milan and Turin salaries run ~40 % above the Italian national median. Lisbon runs ~25 % above Portugal’s median. If you are relocating to a major economic hub, skew upward from the national figure.

Methodology

Gross median figures are sourced from OECD Average Annual Wages (AV_AN_WAGE dataset, latest 2024), Eurostat Structure of Earnings Survey 2022 (for EU percentiles), ILO Global Wage Report 2024–25 (for non-OECD coverage), and national statistics offices for Singapore (DOS), UAE (FCSC), Brazil (IBGE), Mexico (INEGI), Thailand (NSO), Vietnam (GSO), and South Africa (StatsSA). Net figures are derived using WhereNext’s domestic tax model ( the same model behind the expat tax rates page), applied at the median gross level. PPP conversion uses World Bank ICP 2021 AIC PLI. FX rates are Q1 2026 spot mid-rates.

Percentile data (p25/p75) is sourced from Eurostat SES 2022 and OECD Taxing Wages 2024 where available; cells are null for countries where the source does not publish percentile breakdowns.

Frequently Asked Questions