We measured the work hours/month a typical worker needs to cover a fixed basket (rent, utilities, groceries, transport, essentials).
Highlights: U.S. 140.0h (11th of the first 42); winners include Bolivia 80h, Romania 84h. We also list OECD extremes (e.g., Mexico 323.2h, Israel 288.8h) outside the main chart to keep it legible.
Method: ICP 2021 price levels + OECD net pay. CSVs linked. Feedback on methods welcome.
Their charts are weird. It's one scalar value, but they show it it strange ways.
"Out of box"? Left and right bars vs. some average? WTF?
It's like somebody into cool UIs did this.
I don't understand this data at all. All of the rich Western European countries has over 200h required work per month, but I don't know of anyone in my country (high or low income) working more than roughly 40h per week.
What was the reasoning behind omitting outliers for the purpose of the press release? I appreciate the transparency, but why leave out the 8 countries where your figures resulted in more than 220 hours of labor a month (and still ranking the “worst” countries just below that point)?
I don’t know much about methodology for this kind of data. So forgive me if these are silly questions. But something feels off: I’m just not convinced that everyone in Mexico works 11 hours a day, 7 days a week to afford their basics. And not to pick on Mexico, but OECD’s hours worked index [1] seems to put Mexican workers at ~2200 hours a year—rather less than the 3840 your method suggests.
Where would you imagine the confounding factors might lie? Would it be silly to imagine some of the differences might involve
* large portions of consumer trade happening in the informal economy, with only relatively legible (thus probably higher-income) consumption factoring into the price indices?
* related: elements of subsistence lifestyles confounding the consumption figures? For example, if I want to rent or build a formal place in Lagos, it would cost a certain amount, but 60% of people there live in informal dwellings whose cost wouldn’t be captured in housing price statistics [0]. So perhaps the price index captures what it costs to live relatively richly there, but the net pay captures a broader range of the income spectrum?
* related: what’s in this constant basket that we’re comparing across vastly different nations? Do the items in your “basket” reflecting typical behavior rather than subsistence minima per se—so reflecting appetitive consumer preferences in some economies? In the sense that the “basket” we’re pricing in the US involves a 4,500 square feet single family dwelling and 3 SUVs, while in Ghana (which you call out for cheap rent) it’s “a roof over your head”? I bet I could survive on big ol’ sacks of rice and beans for a long time if I needed to, but that’s not what people buy where I live: would the “food” in your basket be “big ol bag of rice and beans” or “what a normal family buys there”?
* it looks like the price data is per capita and the wage data is per formally-taxed worker after tax. Do these figures then reflect different patterns of labor force participation or household composition between economies? That is, are these household-level hours? If my whole 12-person extended family live together, and I’m the sole breadwinner, do we get dinged for 12 rent bills and 12 transportation bills but only count one formal paycheck?
* OECD net pay—that’s net of taxes, yeah? Sounds from the abstract like they factor in cash transfers from social programs as if it were earned as pay—so those “hours” aren’t actually worked—but granted I can’t imagine that’s too big of a number. In the same spirit though what proportion of the “fixed basket” gets paid for through those taxes rather than out of a household’s net pay (in, for example, the socialist countries you call out)?
* could low-paying jobs be paradoxically overrepresented in formal data, since “multinational mining concern” might keep more formal books than “neighborhood merchant who prefers that you pay in cash”?
Im from Sweden, and let me tell you, the average swede is working less than 168, probably more like 140 hours a month taking into account all the vacation and other generous days off. Finland aint very different. And people are living well. So im wondering what is the purpose of the 200+h number? It feels wrong or manipulated/molded into existence.
Something doesnt pass the smell test.
I mean, just look at your colored map. Its like the reverse of where people live good lives.
What is this? The formatting of this article is horrendous, the writing style follows common AI output (read: slop), often to the point of being nonsensical, and the citations are questionable at best.
For example, they never actually state WHAT their basic needs are - despite it being the crux of their article and referencing a consumer's "basket" 18 times, they never state what goods they are comparing!
They cite bizarre data like linking to a CSV of "their" OECD, then utilize it to rattle off a number of stats that don't correlate with each other. The charts don't look right either.
The website is drowning in banner ads - despite being a .org TLD - and looks so sloppy that a high schooler could make a more coherent and convincing report, despite being written by "(name) Economic & Pricing Investigator | Content Reviewed by CFA (name)".
This is frankly trash, and any valuable insight is impossible to distinguish against the backdrop of sloppy garbage. We should be posting higher quality articles than this.
interesting to see Turkey is leading the list. Although it is well known that Turkey is overall cheap compared to the Europe in terms of basic goods, apparently inflation on the minimum wage is greater than the inflation of the basic goods.
However, I would like to note that cheapest of the cheapest things you can get in Turkey will have significantly less quality than European counterparts. Even the "rejects" from EU being sold in internal market. This includes produce with risky levels of GMO.
I think the "Big-Mac Index" would have a comparable result. Just divide minimum wage into how many meals per month (30 days * 3 meals-per-day = 90 meals-per-month) times Big-Mac price. (~6 euros?). So, 540 euros. Given ~12.82 euros minimum wage in Germany (gross), you gotta work 540 / 12,82 = ~42,122 hours per month. Which slightly above 1 week given 40h work-week or the "German" way, ~6 days with 35h work-week...
I would like to see the actual data on rent and utilities and so on. Because I have feeling something is awfully off there... Or data is hugely skewed.
13 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] threadAre health care and taxes included?
https://www.thepricer.org/hours-to-afford-essentials-best-an...
I don’t know much about methodology for this kind of data. So forgive me if these are silly questions. But something feels off: I’m just not convinced that everyone in Mexico works 11 hours a day, 7 days a week to afford their basics. And not to pick on Mexico, but OECD’s hours worked index [1] seems to put Mexican workers at ~2200 hours a year—rather less than the 3840 your method suggests.
Where would you imagine the confounding factors might lie? Would it be silly to imagine some of the differences might involve
* large portions of consumer trade happening in the informal economy, with only relatively legible (thus probably higher-income) consumption factoring into the price indices?
* related: elements of subsistence lifestyles confounding the consumption figures? For example, if I want to rent or build a formal place in Lagos, it would cost a certain amount, but 60% of people there live in informal dwellings whose cost wouldn’t be captured in housing price statistics [0]. So perhaps the price index captures what it costs to live relatively richly there, but the net pay captures a broader range of the income spectrum?
* related: what’s in this constant basket that we’re comparing across vastly different nations? Do the items in your “basket” reflecting typical behavior rather than subsistence minima per se—so reflecting appetitive consumer preferences in some economies? In the sense that the “basket” we’re pricing in the US involves a 4,500 square feet single family dwelling and 3 SUVs, while in Ghana (which you call out for cheap rent) it’s “a roof over your head”? I bet I could survive on big ol’ sacks of rice and beans for a long time if I needed to, but that’s not what people buy where I live: would the “food” in your basket be “big ol bag of rice and beans” or “what a normal family buys there”?
* it looks like the price data is per capita and the wage data is per formally-taxed worker after tax. Do these figures then reflect different patterns of labor force participation or household composition between economies? That is, are these household-level hours? If my whole 12-person extended family live together, and I’m the sole breadwinner, do we get dinged for 12 rent bills and 12 transportation bills but only count one formal paycheck?
* OECD net pay—that’s net of taxes, yeah? Sounds from the abstract like they factor in cash transfers from social programs as if it were earned as pay—so those “hours” aren’t actually worked—but granted I can’t imagine that’s too big of a number. In the same spirit though what proportion of the “fixed basket” gets paid for through those taxes rather than out of a household’s net pay (in, for example, the socialist countries you call out)?
* could low-paying jobs be paradoxically overrepresented in formal data, since “multinational mining concern” might keep more formal books than “neighborhood merchant who prefers that you pay in cash”?
[0] https://punchng.com/60-lagos-residents-live-in-informal-sett...
[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html
Something doesnt pass the smell test.
I mean, just look at your colored map. Its like the reverse of where people live good lives.
For example, they never actually state WHAT their basic needs are - despite it being the crux of their article and referencing a consumer's "basket" 18 times, they never state what goods they are comparing!
They cite bizarre data like linking to a CSV of "their" OECD, then utilize it to rattle off a number of stats that don't correlate with each other. The charts don't look right either.
The website is drowning in banner ads - despite being a .org TLD - and looks so sloppy that a high schooler could make a more coherent and convincing report, despite being written by "(name) Economic & Pricing Investigator | Content Reviewed by CFA (name)".
This is frankly trash, and any valuable insight is impossible to distinguish against the backdrop of sloppy garbage. We should be posting higher quality articles than this.