Mexico has the worst salary among the countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with an average that barely reaches 5.5 dollars per hour before taxes.
The international organization indicated that this figure is similar to the income that Mexican workers obtained in 2015, which shows a stagnation of at least seven years in terms of wages.
Through the OECD Employment Outlook 2024 study, it reported that the average salary in Mexico registered a marginal advance of half a percentage point between 2015 and 2021, which allowed workers to advance from 5.5 to six dollars per hour.
However, in 2022, the income of Mexicans lost the progress it had achieved and returned to a salary of 5.5 dollars per hour, whose impact confirmed Mexico as the country with the lowest labor income among the 36 economies that make up the OECD.
Mexicans earn eight times less
The international organization said that this result shows that Mexicans earn up to eight times less than workers in economies such as Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, which lead the ranking with an average salary of 37 to more than 40 dollars per hour.
It highlighted that Norwegian employees achieved the best income in the OECD, with an average of 42 dollars per hour, equivalent to an increase of 663% over the 5.5 dollars that Mexicans earned during the reference period.
As if that were not enough, when comparing that same salary – of 5.5 dollars – against the average of the member countries of the global organization, which reached 25 dollars per hour in 2022, it is clear that in Mexico it is necessary to work up to five times more to match the average of the organization.
Along the same lines, it highlights that the average salary of Mexican employees is much lower than the level of its most important commercial partners such as the United States, Canada and Spain, where income reaches 24, 27.5 and 23 dollars for an hour of work, respectively.
Job insecurity in Mexico
The OECD study indicated that in addition to measuring the hourly income of workers, it is necessary to know the degree of security or insecurity in their employment and the monetary loss associated with becoming and remaining unemployed.
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Under this premise, the organization pointed out that labor market security improved in general throughout the OECD between 2015 and 2022, and specified that the expected monetary loss associated with unemployment decreased by 1.9 percentage points.
In the case of Mexico, the organization detailed that the level of job insecurity reached 5% in 2015 and decreased by 3.2% at the end of 2022, which places the country at a level similar to the organization’s average in terms of monetary losses.
“This positive pattern was driven by both lower unemployment rates in most OECD countries, as well as higher income related to unemployment insurance,” wage increases and the creation of work spaces.
OECD countries with the highest hourly wages
Luxembourg: $42
Norway: $41
Belgium: $40
Denmark: $39
Netherlands: $37
Countries with the lowest hourly wages
Mexico: $5.5
Colombia: $6.5
Chile: $10
Costa Rica: $10.5
Hungary: $12
OECD average: $25 per hour
Source: publimetro
