MacWages: An alternative use for The Economist's Big Mac index

    > For the Big Mac wage analysis (the MacWage, for short), we started with full-time, pre-tax earnings in 2023 as reported by the OECD, a club of 38 mostly rich countries. We then made a simple adjustment, dividing wages by the price of a Big Mac—all in local currencies. That gave us the number of burgers that the average full-time worker can buy annually.

    > A standard objection to any measure of higher incomes in America is that its workers generally get less time off. To factor this in, we looked at average hours worked, based on data from the OECD and the Conference Board, a business-research group. This yields slightly different results. Americans still get more than enough Big Macs—pulling in the equivalent of about 7.4 per hour on the job—but they drop to third in the ranking.

    > The MacWage is, of course, far from perfect. Danes may celebrate their top performance, but our measure misses how income taxes (which can surpass 50% in Denmark) eat into their burger budgets. Much else of what goes into the cost of living, from housing to transportation, is also barely reflected in the price of burgers.