11/04/2005 2:27:24 pm
Western Europe: Highest Price for Labour in the World. A new survey from Mercer Human Resource Consulting shows that the wage costs in Western Europe are the highest in the world. Belgium, Sweden and Germany have the highest costs of all - more than 50 000 euro a worker per year. In Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the annual cost is between 5 000 and 10 000 euro a year. And of course you can have five to ten times higher wage if you do a job which is worth five to ten times more in the market. But this is not the case; the difference in productivity is smaller than that. So do we have to decrease wages in order to have companies and jobs in Western Europe? No - that is not the main issue. The fact that has to be remembered is that the 50 000 is not the wage - it is the wage cost. In Sweden, an average worker pays 63 % in tax. Thus, he or she only gets 18 500 in dispoable income - i e wage. Thus, there is an enormous potential in cutting taxes to decrease the wage costs - and make Western Europe much more attractive for companies and investments.

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