FORBES: The Swiss have the fattest wallets while Eastern Europeans still make do with meager wages.
LONDON -- Like the feeling of a hefty wage packet? Move to Switzerland. That's where you'll find the two cities with the highest-paid workers in Europe, according to a new survey of wages that was released on Wednesday. Residents of Zurich, in the German-speaking part of the country, earn an average $22.60 an hour after taxes, while Geneva's French-speaking citizens earn an average $20.40 an hour.
Salaries are not so first-rate in Kiev, Ukraine. It ranks last. Workers there earn a measly $2.40 an hour on average, or just over a tenth of what the Swiss earn.
Behind The Numbers
The findings come from Swiss bank UBS ( UBS - news - people )' "Price and Earnings" survey that looks at purchasing power in 73 global cities. The data was compiled by surveying hourly wages in 14 different professions, taking into account working hours, paid vacation and legal holidays, and converting them into American dollars over six weeks between early March and mid-April 2009. The report measured net pay per hour, gross pay per hour, tax and social security contributions, vacation days and the number of days an employee would need to work to buy an 8-gigabyte iPod Nano. >>> Parmy Olson | Friday, August 21, 2009
