International hiring context
Employer contributions by country
Before comparing a US hire with an overseas hire, separate the employer tax component from gross salary, benefits and the EOR fee.
2025 reference data. OECD report published April 22, 2026; source checked November 2, 2026 (Bogotá).
Single full-time worker, no children, earning 100% of each country's average wage. The wage amount differs by country. This is a historical comparison, not a current payroll rate or a quote for your employee.
The employer share and the total tax wedge measure different things
The employer column below includes employer social security contributions (SSCs) and payroll taxes where applicable. The total tax wedge also includes employee SSCs and income tax, net of applicable cash benefits. Adding that entire wedge on top of salary would double count employee deductions.
| Country | Employer SSCs + payroll taxes | Total tax wedge |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 7.5% | 30.0% |
| Canada | 8.8% | 32.1% |
| United Kingdom | 12.0% | 32.4% |
| Germany | 17.3% | 49.3% |
Published values rounded to one decimal. UK “2025” uses tax year 2025–2026 under the OECD convention. These four countries are a selected comparison, not the full dataset.
7.5% of labour cost is about 8.1 per 100 of gross salary
The US employer figure uses total labour cost as its denominator. It cannot be copied directly into a field asking for a percentage added above gross salary.
Employer component per 100 of gross wage ≈ 100 × 7.5 ÷ 92.5 = 8.1 units. This is our denominator illustration using the rounded source value. It is not a statutory rate, a dollar quote or an estimate of the full employer burden.
Non-tax compulsory payments sit outside this OECD tax measure. Benefits, insurance, equipment and provider fees also need their own treatment. A zero in the table, including Colombia and New Zealand, does not mean there are no employer obligations.
Ask for the same breakdown in every hiring quote
- Specify the hire. Give the work location, employment arrangement, occupation, gross salary, pay frequency and currency. Country averages cannot price a particular role or city.
- Separate the amounts. Ask for gross salary, employer taxes and SSCs, other compulsory payments, benefits, insurance, EOR or payroll fees, and one-off charges. Keep employee withholding inside gross salary.
- Match the basis. Confirm whether each percentage uses gross salary or total labour cost, which wage caps apply, and whether each amount is annual or monthly. Request a dated local calculation for the actual hire.
- Check the arrangement. Entity payroll and an EOR are different services. Confirm country coverage and employment eligibility with the provider before treating a quote as actionable.
Use the Deel vs Remote comparison to frame the service question. For a US state scenario, use the US hiring budget tool with its own assumptions. The OECD figures on this page are not inputs to that calculator.
All 38 OECD countries
Coverage is the 38 members in this table, not every country in the world. The OECD average is kept separately in the JSON and is not counted as a country. There is no missing-country value filled with zero.
Download 38-country CSV JSON with definitions and sources
Show all countries and the employer tax component
| Country | Employer share |
|---|---|
| Australia | 5.7% |
| Austria | 21.6% |
| Belgium | 21.4% |
| Canada | 8.8% |
| Chile | 0.4% |
| Colombia | 0.0% |
| Costa Rica | 19.8% |
| Czechia | 25.3% |
| Denmark | 0.7% |
| Estonia | 25.3% |
| Finland | 17.0% |
| France | 26.7% |
| Germany | 17.3% |
| Greece | 17.9% |
| Hungary | 11.5% |
| Iceland | 6.0% |
| Ireland | 10.1% |
| Israel | 5.9% |
| Italy | 24.0% |
| Japan | 13.5% |
| Korea | 10.0% |
| Latvia | 19.1% |
| Lithuania | 1.8% |
| Luxembourg | 12.0% |
| Mexico | 9.8% |
| Netherlands | 11.2% |
| New Zealand | 0.0% |
| Norway | 11.5% |
| Poland | 14.0% |
| Portugal | 19.2% |
| Slovak Republic | 24.4% |
| Slovenia | 14.2% |
| Spain | 23.4% |
| Sweden | 23.9% |
| Switzerland | 6.0% |
| Türkiye | 15.6% |
| United Kingdom | 12.0% |
| United States | 7.5% |
OECD period conventions differ: Australia uses 2024–2025; Italy's 2025 results use 2024 policies. These conventions limit a “same calendar year” interpretation. The downloads preserve the original Excel precision and label the rounded display values separately.
Source and update method
Source: OECD (2026), Taxing Wages 2026, Table 1.2, printed page 26; methodology on pages 20–21. Employer column extracted and sorted by country by EmployerCost. The four-country selection and the denominator example are our presentation. No OECD endorsement is implied.
OECD publication · Original table in the OECD PDF · Official Excel table · CC BY 4.0
We checked the 38 country rows and the separate OECD average against the PDF at its published precision. The Excel adds an Austria cash-benefit note to the total wedge; the employer column is unchanged. This guide does not recompute the total wedge from the displayed components.
Review when the next annual Taxing Wages edition appears. Keep the worker profile, table, reference year and country coverage together; recheck revisions before changing the download. Source check date is not the data year.