Dimension: Labor Tax Wedge — Single Worker

Single, childless worker at average national wage · total tax + social contributions (employee + employer) as % of total labor cost

† Vintage note: the US figure is 2024 data, from OECD's own United States country note in Taxing Wages 2025. UK, Greece, Italy, and Germany are 2025 data, from Taxing Wages 2026 (the following year's edition, covering the following year's data — OECD's naming convention lags the reference year by one). A search for the US's 2025 figure specifically did not turn up a clean number worth citing over the 2024 one; the OECD average tax wedge moved only 0.15–0.2 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, so the one-year gap is unlikely to change the ranking shown here, but it is a real inconsistency in the underlying data, not a rounding choice, and is flagged rather than smoothed over.

Sources: Germany, Greece, Italy, UK — OECD, Taxing Wages 2026 (2025 data) and Tax Foundation Europe's compilation of the same (UK figure specifically). US — OECD, Taxing Wages 2025, United States country note (2024 data).