International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs in Manufacturing, 2013 - China and India
China and India
ILC has developed estimates of hourly compensation costs for employees in the Chinese and Indian manufacturing sectors.1 Due to various data gaps and methodological issues, compensation costs for China and India are not directly comparable to each other or with the data for other countries found in this report, and therefore are presented separately. Data are available for China through 2012 and for India through 2011.
For China, ILC approximates average hourly compensation costs in manufacturing by filling important data gaps for hours worked per year and for benefit components of labor compensation. Further, the concepts and coverage of Chinese statistics on manufacturing employment and wages often do not follow international standards and can be difficult to understand. Largely because of these data gaps and challenges, ILC estimates for China cannot be considered as robust as the manufacturing statistics for the other countries in this report.
For India, ILC estimates of compensation costs refer to formal manufacturing only, rather than to total manufacturing in the country. Unorganized sector manufacturing workers account for approximately 80 percent of total manufacturing employment in India and earn substantially less than their formal sector counterparts. For this reason, employers’ average compensation costs in formal manufacturing overstate average compensation costs for Indian manufacturing as a whole.
Chart 4. Average hourly compensation costs in India and China, as a percent of costs in the United States, 2002-2012
Click on the Chart to Browse Compensation Costs by Country.
Chart 5. Employer social insurance expenditure as a percent of total compensation, 2002-2012
Click on the Chart to Browse Compensation Costs by Country.
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