SINGAPORE — The United States is one of the cheapest countries in the world to employ someone, according to the Global Employer Burden Index, an independently scored ranking of 192 countries and territories published by Employ Borderless. The index measures what it actually costs and takes to employ someone by law, and its full ranking, pillar scores, and sourced statutory inputs are published as open data and permanently archived with a DOI.
The index evaluates each country using three statutory pillars:
- Employer social security contributions (50% weighting)
- Statutory severance (30%)
- Statutory notice periods (20%)
Each pillar is ranked against every other scored country and combined into a composite score from 0 to 100, where a higher score represents a heavier statutory employer burden.
Countries are included only when approved, sourced values are available for all three pillars. Where data is unavailable, countries are listed as excluded rather than estimated. The index contains no estimates and no AI-generated data.
Where the United States ranks
The United States ranks 158th out of 192 countries, making it the lightest statutory employer burden among the G7 economies.
The U.S. has:
- No federal statutory severance requirement
- No statutory notice requirement
- Employer social contributions of approximately 8%
As a result, it is one of the least expensive countries in the world to employ someone from a statutory perspective, despite relatively high wages and overall labour costs.
The impact becomes clear when comparing a single employee earning a $50,000 annual salary:
- United States: approximately $54,000
- United Kingdom: approximately $56,800
- Germany: approximately $60,400
- France: approximately $68,200
- Argentina: approximately $69,500 (the highest-ranked employer burden)
Each figure represents the base salary plus any mandatory 13th-month salary where legally required, multiplied by statutory employer contribution rates. Contribution ceilings and other statutory obligations are not included. The differences are driven solely by legal employer obligations before benefits or market compensation are considered.
Global findings
Argentina records the highest employer burden of any scored country, followed by Belarus, Czechia, Vietnam, and Egypt. At the opposite end of the ranking, New Zealand has the lightest statutory employer burden.
Across the index:
- 38 countries and territories have no statutory severance requirements, meaning termination costs depend primarily on notice periods, employment contracts, and negotiation rather than mandatory severance payments.
- 58 countries and territories are excluded from scoring because one or more statutory pillars could not be supported by reliable source data. Rather than estimating missing values, these jurisdictions are transparently listed as excluded.
“Salary is only part of the cost. We measured the statutory employer burden from sourced data, published every input, and excluded countries where reliable data was missing.”
— Robbin Schuchmann, Co-founder of Employ Borderless
The complete dataset is available in both CSV and JSON formats. Every value includes its source and publication date, and the data may be quoted or republished with attribution under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
The dataset is permanently archived on Zenodo under DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21211464.
Explore the index and download the data at:
employborderless.com/hiring-intelligence/employer-burden-index/
About Employ Borderless
Employ Borderless is an independent advisory platform for global hiring. It helps companies compare employer of record (EOR) and global payroll providers while providing transparent, sourced research into the statutory cost of employing workers around the world. The Global Employer Burden Index forms part of the company’s open hiring intelligence research.
Media Contact
Robbin Schuchmann
Employ Borderless
robbin@employborderless.com