U.S. ranks 158th in global employer burden index

The United States is among the cheapest places in the world to employ someone on a statutory basis, ranking 158th out of 192 countries in a new index from Employ Borderless. The ranking matters for companies comparing cross-border hiring costs because it isolates legal employer obligations such as social security, severance and notice periods.

Why it matters: - The ranking shows the U.S. has one of the lightest legal employer cost burdens among major economies. - For companies hiring globally, statutory obligations can materially change the true cost of adding headcount before salary, benefits or market compensation. - The index is designed to help employers compare those legal costs using sourced public data instead of salary alone.

What happened: - Employ Borderless published the Global Employer Burden Index, an independently scored ranking covering 192 countries and territories. - The United States ranked 158th out of 192, making it the lightest statutory employer burden among the G7 economies. - The company published the full rankings, pillar scores and statutory inputs as open data with a DOI. - The dataset is permanently archived on Zenodo under DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21211464. - The data can be explored at the employer burden index.

The details: - The index scores three statutory pillars: employer social security contributions at 50%, statutory severance at 30% and statutory notice periods at 20%. - Each pillar is ranked across all scored countries and combined into a composite score from 0 to 100. - A higher score means a heavier statutory employer burden. - Countries are included only when approved, sourced values are available for all three pillars. - Jurisdictions with missing data are excluded rather than estimated. - The index contains no estimates and no AI-generated data. - The U.S. has no federal statutory severance requirement. - The U.S. has no statutory notice requirement. - U.S. employer social security contributions are approximately 8%. - For a single employee earning a $50,000 annual salary, the U.S. statutory employer cost is about $54,000. - The same calculation yields about $56,800 in the United Kingdom, $60,400 in Germany, $68,200 in France and $69,500 in Argentina. - Argentina has the highest employer burden in the comparison set. - Each comparison figure includes 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 in the comparison figures.

Between the lines: - The U.S. remains expensive to hire in absolute wage terms, but its legal employer obligations are relatively light. - That makes statutory cost comparisons very different from total compensation comparisons. - The ranking also highlights how uneven global hiring rules remain, especially around severance and notice obligations. - New Zealand has the lightest statutory employer burden at the opposite end of the index. - Belarus, Czechia, Vietnam and Egypt rank behind Argentina among the heaviest statutory burdens. - 38 countries and territories have no statutory severance requirements, so termination costs there depend mainly on notice periods, contracts and negotiation. - 58 countries and territories are excluded from scoring because one or more statutory pillars could not be supported by reliable source data. - The exclusion approach keeps the index transparent, but it also means the ranking is narrower than a simple world map of all jurisdictions.

What's next: - Employ Borderless says the dataset is available in CSV and JSON formats. - Every value includes its source and publication date. - The data may be quoted or republished with attribution under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. - Employ Borderless says the index is part of its broader open hiring intelligence research. - The company positions the research as a resource for employers comparing EOR and global payroll providers.

The bottom line: - The U.S. is a low-burden country for statutory employment costs, even though it is not a low-cost labor market overall.