Employer cost by country (2026)
What an employee costs on top of gross salary, country by country.
In most of these countries there is no single employer rate, and a table that gave one would be lying. Ceilings make the effective rate fall as pay rises. Reliefs make it fall as pay falls — France's is largest at the minimum wage and smallest at the top, the opposite of what almost everyone assumes. And accident premiums are set by trade, so two employers paying the same salary do not owe the same amount. What follows is a range per country, with the components behind it on each page.
| Country | Employer contributions | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| France | 7 % – 42 % | degressive — lowest at the bottom |
| Spain | 30.65 % – 37 % | banded by threshold or trade |
| United Kingdom | 0 % – 15 % | banded by threshold or trade |
| Ireland | 9 % – 11.25 % | banded by threshold or trade |
| Portugal | 23.75 % | flat, no ceiling |
Why only five countries
Because these five are the ones whose rate could be read at the institution that sets it — Urssaf, the Seguridad Social, HMRC, the Irish state's own information service, and the Portuguese contributions code. Germany is a sum of five branch rates plus levies plus a trade-association accident premium, and assembling it from secondary sources would produce a number nobody could check. The same holds for Austria, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Mexico. They are absent rather than approximate.