Canadians make more than Brits, the Irish and the Dutch, but less than the Swiss, Icelandic and Americans.
A new survey by Tipalti, an international accounting software firm that has payroll platforms, outlines 2021 average annual wages rankings for 34 countries.
Canada ranked No. 8 with an average CDN$74,173.
The survey rankings are based on average annual wage in US dollars because local currencies vary widely.
For instance, Canada's average $74,173 is US$54,175.
The currency exchange is pretty close in the case of No. 1 Switzerland with 89,767 Swiss francs working out to US$91,952 or $128,000 Canadian.
The conversion is mind boggling for No. 2 Iceland with its average annual wage of 11,705,368 Icelandic krona equaling US$81,844.
And that's not even the wildest exchange swing.
No. 21 Korea has an average annual wage of 42,549,984 Korean won, which translates to US$29,703.
See how all the math works in the top 10 list below.
Countries that aren't in the top 10 that you'd think would be include the UK at No. 16, New Zealand at No. 15 and Japan at No. 20.
In an effort to localize these numbers, we dug back to Statistics Canada's median annual wages for Kelowna, which were $48,000 for men, $36,800 for women and household income of $85,000.
That translates to US$36,199 for men, US$29,803 for women and US$62,782 household.
The Kelowna man's annual of US$36,199 would put Kelowna in between No. 19 France (US$39,364) and No. 20 Japan (US$30,792) in the Tipalti rankings.
It's difficult to make direct comparisons with the Tipalti rankings because they are average, whereas the Kelowna Stats Can numbers are medians.
Medians tend to be less than average because median is a measurement in which an equal number is expected to fall above and below it.
What we can extrapolate from Canada's and Kelowna's average wages is that they are fairly good on a world stage, but not excellent.
Particularly Kelowna's wages are fairly low when you consider the price of housing and the cost of living here.
It's often been pointed out that Kelowna's gloss of wealth is thanks to people that made their piles of money elsewhere and moved here for the desirable lifestyle and-or people who are living off their hefty investments.
Therefore, people who are actually working and paid wages are making less.
The survey pointed out that Switzerland and Iceland ranked No. 1 and 2 as developed, first-world nations that have notoriously high costs of living with wages trying to keep up.
Switzerland also has a lot of high wages associated with it being an international banking and investment hub.
No. 3 US is a reflection that the country has great disparity with the minority rich, offsetting the majority making less.
Of the 34 countries ranked, Mexico was No. 34 with an average annual wage of US$9,057, Hungary No. 33 with US$10,615 and Poland at No. 32 and $13,280.
The Tipalti survey estimates the Canadian average annual wage will go up 26.2% over the next nine years to US$68,356, which is a step in the right direction, but wouldn't keep up with the current rate of inflation of 8% annually.
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