The Global Employment Cost League Table 2026
Hire the same person on the same €60,000 gross salary in 40 different countries and the mandatory employer bill runs from 47.9% of salary in Spain to under 0.5% in Thailand.
In Spain the statutory add-on is €28,762 before anyone has bought a laptop or paid a recruiter. In Thailand, contribution ceilings squeeze the same obligation down to 0.48% of salary.
That is the central finding of WhichPayroll’s July 2026 study: a ranking of statutory employer costs for a standardised €60,000 hire across 40 countries, computed scheme by scheme with every contribution ceiling modelled. Each country entered the table only after the model reproduced that country’s own published worked example within 1.5%. All 40 pass that test.
The result looks nothing like the contribution-rate tables that dominate this topic, because headline rates mislead in both directions. Caps make expensive-looking countries cheap, and mandatory extra pay months make mid-table countries expensive.
Mandatory employer add-on across 40 countries
The scenario is a base salary of €60,000 paid as 12 standard monthly wages, converted at exchange rates pinned to 1 July 2026. Where the law requires additional salary payments beyond those 12 monthly wages, such as a statutory 13th or 14th month, those payments are counted as employer cost in this standardised scenario.
In countries where annual packages are customarily agreed across 14 instalments, Spain and Portugal among them, an agreed package may already include those payments; the contributions-only ranking in the methodology treats them that way. Each row links to the country’s payroll guide.
Austria. Its near-universal 13th and 14th months come from collective agreements rather than statute, so the 29.57% shown understates customary Austrian cost.
Netherlands. The 8% holiday allowance is a percentage of salary rather than a salary month and sits outside the statutory-months rule. Both cases are documented on the methodology page.
The 100× spread
On contributions alone, mandatory employer on-cost at €60,000 ranges from 45.4% in France to under 0.5% in Thailand, a 100× gap once Spain’s extra months are counted. Thailand is the sharpest single illustration: contributions are charged only on the first THB 17,500 of monthly salary, so the statutory 5.2% headline rate collapses to an effective 0.48% at this salary level.
One French hire equals twelve cheap-country hires
Measured on contributions alone, France’s 45.4% employer add-on exceeds the twelve cheapest countries in the table combined, which sum to 38.8%. France gets there through 16 separate employer schemes, four of which cap at the €48,060 social security ceiling.
The 14-pagas effect
Once mandatory extra-month pay is counted, Spain overtakes France for first place at 47.9% and Portugal jumps from 9th to 3rd at 44.4%. Spain’s contributions-only figure is 30.65% and Portugal’s is 23.75%: their statutory 14-payment structures add a sixth of annual salary that contribution-rate comparisons never show.
Italy and Brazil follow the same pattern at smaller scale. Italy moves from 30.0% to 40.83% on the strength of the tredicesima, and Brazil from 21.54% to 34.41% once the 13th month and the one-third holiday premium are added.
Caps cut the bill in half
In 5 of the 40 countries (the Philippines, Vietnam, Denmark, Kenya and Thailand), contribution ceilings bind so hard that the contributions-only employer cost is the same amount of money at €30,000 as at €60,000. The table below also shows the next-most-capped countries, where the effective rate falls steeply without fully flattening.
| Country | Rate at €30,000 | Rate at €60,000 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vietnam | 16.58% | 8.29% | ÷2 |
| Malaysia | 8.18% | 4.59% | −44% |
| Hong Kong | 5.00% | 3.36% | −33% |
| Philippines* | 3.55% | 1.78% | ÷2 |
| Denmark | 3.48% | 1.74% | ÷2 |
| Indonesia | 2.56% | 1.51% | −41% |
| Kenya | 2.20% | 1.10% | ÷2 |
| Thailand | 0.96% | 0.48% | ÷2 |
*Contributions only. In five of the eight, the employer pays an identical absolute amount at both salaries, so the rate exactly halves: Denmark’s levies come to DKK 7,793 either way, Kenya’s sit at KES 97,200, Thailand’s at THB 10,980. Past the ceiling, the state simply stops charging.
The Philippines paradox
The most cap-distorted country in the table, and the clearest case for computing these numbers rather than copying them. Every scheme caps early: the SSS employer share at PHP 420,000 of annual salary, PhilHealth at PHP 100,000 a month, Pag-IBIG at PHP 10,000 a month. The mandatory 13th month then adds a full month of salary on top.
How the numbers were built
Five decisions were written down before anything was computed, and they are published in full on the methodology page.
Pinned exchange rates. ECB reference rates pinned to 1 July 2026, with central-bank official rates for currencies the ECB does not publish.
One scenario. A single full-time employee on a fixed €60,000 gross salary in a standard office risk class, with a €30,000 sensitivity run alongside.
Cap-aware computation. Every contribution is computed as the lower of rate times base and the legal ceiling. Non-gross bases, thresholds, salary-banded rates and fixed-amount levies are all modelled explicitly.
Extra months in scope. Where the law requires additional salary payments beyond 12 standard monthly wages, those payments are counted as employer cost in the standardised 12-month salary scenario; the contributions-only ranking is published alongside for anyone who prefers that framing.
Two hard honesty gates. A country enters only if the model reproduces its own published worked example within 1.5%: all 40 pass. No pinned exchange rate, no computation. The table covers statutory obligations only.
According to WhichPayroll’s July 2026 Global Employment Cost League Table, mandatory employer costs on a €60,000 hire range from 47.9% of salary in Spain to under 0.5% in Thailand.