[rnd33]

The wage structure is very flat in my country, the average wage is only around 15% higher than the median. The median wage is very livable on. For essential or basic needs I would estimate you would only need ~70% of the median wage.

I appreciate that I could be biased, and my guesses could be off, but we're talking about almost a factor two here. If the numbers would be correct the average person does not even have enough money for the minimum essentials every month, which is extremely far from what I see and hear.

[mickeymounds]

You’re right to sanity-check. Our number is hours of pay needed for a single renter on a new lease, not hours actually worked.

Using your own anchors: if essentials ≈ 70% of median net pay and an effective month is ~140 paid hours (vacation/holidays), then hours = 0.7 × 140 ≈ 98h — nowhere near 200h.

So why would our Nordic rows show >200h? Likely method artifacts:

Rent input: we used current market 1-BR rents (upper bound). Many people have in-place/regulated rents, own, or share, which slashes hours per person.

Hour divisor: some wage series forced monthly ÷ 160–168h instead of ~140 effective hours → inflates the ratio ~10–20%.

Geography mix: capital-city prices vs national wages can overstate costs.

[bauruine]

You have 190 hours for Switzerland. The average full time job here is 42 hours a week at most. 4x42 = 168. Not a single person living here is working 190 hours to cover their basic needs. Sorry but your numbers are complete bullshit. No idea why this is on the front page.