E.g. "family provider PPP" or "bachelor PPP" or "student PPP". Or "middle-class PPP" (BMW prices) vs "upper-class PPP" (yacht prices)
Are health care and taxes included?
Edit: I do like that this uses time as a measure versus fiat; fiat can be gamed, time consumed to meet a need cannot.
[1] https://www.threads.com/@sarahbesingrand/post/DJGCx47sqPI/th...
[2] https://mises.org/mises-wire/britain-france-and-spain-poorer...
[3] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/poorest-us-state-rivals-ge...
There's too many specific variables to account for in this that I feel like the general comparison is almost hurtful at worst or doesn't tell the whole story at best.
But more importantly, it ignores what you can do with the extra hours you work.. same as with PPP it ignores that an iPhone isn't cheaper (it may not be a basic necessity), but many globally traded goods that go beyond basic needs aren't affected by PPP.
Quality: True—quality varies. We use a fixed, minimal basket to avoid hedonic debates; I can add sensitivity bands by quality/spec.
“What extra hours buy”: Good point. We’ll add Discretionary Hours = paid hours/month − hours to essentials to show room for non-essentials, saving, leisure.
iPhone / tradables: Different lens. Many tradables price similarly across countries; essentials are mostly local/non-tradable and drive this metric. We can add a companion “tradables-hours” (e.g., hours to buy an iPhone/streaming bundle).
Takeaway: Essentials-hours ≠ welfare. It’s one clean piece—time to cover basics—best paired with discretionary and tradables views.
I appreciate that I could be biased, and my guesses could be off, but we're talking about almost a factor two here. If the numbers would be correct the average person does not even have enough money for the minimum essentials every month, which is extremely far from what I see and hear.
Using your own anchors: if essentials ≈ 70% of median net pay and an effective month is ~140 paid hours (vacation/holidays), then hours = 0.7 × 140 ≈ 98h — nowhere near 200h.
So why would our Nordic rows show >200h? Likely method artifacts:
Rent input: we used current market 1-BR rents (upper bound). Many people have in-place/regulated rents, own, or share, which slashes hours per person.
Hour divisor: some wage series forced monthly ÷ 160–168h instead of ~140 effective hours → inflates the ratio ~10–20%.
Geography mix: capital-city prices vs national wages can overstate costs.
Quick back-of-envelope with public data:
Typical pay: Median gross ≈ CHF 6,788/mo (FSO). OECD shows the net take-home for an average single worker is ~82% of gross; using actual hours worked ~1,529/yr ⇒ ~CHF 44 net/hour.
Starter basket (monthly): national rent avg ≈ CHF 1,451 (all dwellings; new leases in Zurich can be ~1,7–2,1k), utilities ~CHF 220, basic groceries ~CHF 500–700, Zurich monthly pass CHF 89. That totals roughly CHF 2.3–2.9k.
Hours of pay needed = basket ÷ net hourly ≈ 50–70 h, not ~190 h. (E.g., CHF 2,600 ÷ CHF 44 ≈ 59 h.)
Using a flat 2,080 h/year to derive hourly pay (instead of actual ~1,529) depresses hourly pay and pushes hours up, which likely inflated our Switzerland row.
Mixing capital-city pricing with national wages can also bias upward.
We’ll correct the Switzerland entry and add a footnote showing the actual-hours denominator we used. Appreciate the nudge.
The average working hours is like 1900 hours a year. Thats like 6 months of basic needs according to you. This just doesn't add up.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
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
Why the >220h outliers were excluded from the press note: We used a trimmed summary to avoid letting a handful of fragile cases (thin/biased price data, capital-city rent proxies, wage series with poor coverage, currency quirks) dominate the headline. In the full write-up, I’ll show the entire distribution, the eight omitted cases, and winsorized vs. raw comparisons so readers can audit the effect.
Where confounding can creep in (you called several):
Informal economy: Formal price series + formal wages can overstate hours where many transact or earn informally.
Housing formality: If rent stats miss informal dwellings, the “solo renter” basket skews too expensive vs. typical living arrangements.
Basket design: Ours is a minimal, non-tradable basket (modest 1-BR rent, basic utilities, ~2,100–2,400 kcal groceries, local transit). No cars, no tuition, no luxury goods. I’ll add a shared-housing variant and a city vs. national sensitivity.
Household composition: The metric is per worker, not per household. A 3-adult household sharing one rent bill will show fewer hours per person than a single renter.
Net pay & transfers: We use net/typical pay (after taxes, including standard cash benefits where the source does). Publicly funded services (health care, schooling) are intentionally excluded from the out-of-pocket basket—this is a cash-flow lens, not a full welfare measure.
Mexico/“11 hours a day” example: That interpretation mixes hours of pay needed with hours actually worked. If the basket costs more than one typical monthly take-home, the ratio can exceed ~173–184 hours/month—even though people don’t work 11h/day; they share housing, live outside the cost center, buy informally, or pool incomes.
What I’ll add to make this clearer (and falsifiable):
A methods box with the exact basket, wage series, and the full, untrimmed table (including the eight outliers).
Two companion views: Shared-housing hours and Discretionary hours = paid hours – hours to essentials.
A city edition (e.g., SF/NYC/Lagos vs. national) so price-level heterogeneity isn’t hidden.
Happy to be corrected—if you have a better wage or rent series for any of the questionable cases, point me to it and I’ll rerun that row and show the delta.
Something doesnt pass the smell test.
I mean, just look at your colored map. Its like the reverse of where people live good lives.
Why it can look high in Sweden/Finland:
New-lease market rent vs. your rent. Many Swedes have regulated/legacy rents or own; our basket uses current market 1-BR (costlier), so it’s an upper-bound for a solo entrant. Households commonly share or pool incomes, which cuts hours per person a lot.
Paid vacation/leave. If the wage source is hourly, paid leave is already priced in. If a dataset forced us to derive hourly from monthly pay ÷ 160–168h, that would overstate hours for Sweden’s effective ~140h months. That alone trims the ratio ~15%.
Not a welfare map. It ignores public services/quality; it’s a cash-flow affordability snapshot for a specific living setup, not “where life is good.”
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.
What “basic needs” means in our chart (single adult, new lease):
Housing: market-rate 1-bedroom rent (current new-lease median, not legacy/regulated rents).
Utilities: basic electricity + heating/cooling + water/sewer/trash for a small 1-BR.
Food: ~2,100–2,400 kcal/day from low-cost local staples (grains/pasta, legumes, eggs, veg/fruit, oil, dairy/chicken) — no brand premiums.
Transport: one local monthly public-transit pass (or closest equivalent).
Everyday basics: SIM/phone plan and hygiene/cleaning essentials. Excluded: healthcare/tuition/childcare, cars, entertainment. Wages: net typical/median pay (after tax/mandatory contributions). Metric: hours needed = basket price ÷ net hourly pay. It’s a cash-flow affordability ratio for a solo renter, not a welfare/quality-of-life score.
On citations & data: Sources are standard (national stats/OECD/Eurostat + operator fares + rental medians from official or broad listing datasets). If you have a better official series for any country (especially rent), point me to it and I’ll rerun that row and note the change.
On the visuals/formatting: Point taken. I can collapse the UI to just the number + rank and move the methods into a single, clean appendix. Ads fund the data work, but I’ll provide an ad-light reader version for this piece.
If something still looks off for your country, share the wage/rent series you trust and I’ll check it.
Quality: Out of scope here. The basket is priced to minimal staples (rent, basic utilities, staple groceries, local transit). We’ll add a “quality bands” sensitivity so readers can see how hours move if you upgrade items.
Big-Mac Index: That’s a tradables proxy and food-only. Our hours include rent + utilities, which usually dominate time cost. Also, you used minimum wage; we use typical/median net hourly pay—minimum-wage calculations will overstate hours vs our method.
Your math note: €540 ÷ €12.82 ≈ 42 hours, but again, that’s food-only and gross wage, so it isn’t comparable to our basket or denominator.
Happy to post Turkey’s component line-items (rent/utilities/food/transit) and the sources in the article for auditability.
Basket (single renter, new lease): 1-BR market rent, basic utilities, staple groceries (~2.1–2.4k kcal/day), local monthly transit.
Formula: hours = monthly basket price ÷ typical net hourly pay.
Sources: Prices via World Bank ICP 2021 component parities (plus local operator fares for transit, tariffs for utilities, and rental medians/listings where available). Pay via OECD Taxing Wages (net) for OECD countries; ILOSTAT gross series as a clearly-flagged proxy elsewhere.
Data files (with country rows you can check):
Global table: https://www.thepricer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wtei_pu... OECD slice (net pay, full range): https://www.thepricer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wtei_oe... Extended (gross-basis, non-comparable): https://www.thepricer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wtei_ex...
I’ll add a small component breakdown table under the chart (rent/utilities/food/transit per country) so you can see exactly what influences the hours. If you have a better official rent/utilities series for a specific country, link it and I’ll rerun that row and note the change.
In what currency is the basket_month_local(5874.057235184511)? Or is it somehow modified value?
The value just seems wrong as it is significantly higher than median. 3584€ in 2023...
mickeymounds•1h ago
throwaway81523•1h ago
mickeymounds•1h ago
Basket (monthly):
1-BR rent ≈ $3,515 (citywide avg)
Utilities (basic) ≈ $233
Groceries (minimum for one) ≈ $585
Transit pass (Muni) $86 — or $104 with BART-within-SF
Total: ≈ $4,350–$4,420/mo.
Hours to cover basics (price ÷ wage):
Using BLS mean gross pay ($48.15/hr for SF-Oakland MSA): ~90–92 hours. Net would be higher. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Using a net pay anchor (Numbeo avg take-home ≈ $7,057/mo ⇒ ~$40.7/hr): ~106–109 hours.
If you rent outside the center (~$2,712), the basket drops to ~$3,616 ⇒ ~75–92 hours (gross vs net). Numbeo
Want to spin a US cities edition? We can replicate this with a fixed basket (1-BR rent, basic utilities, minimum groceries, local monthly transit) and city-level wage anchors (BLS + net adjustments). Start with SF, NYC, LA, Seattle, Austin, Miami, Chicago, Boston, DC, Denver, and expand.