Data Sources & Methodology

Where Our Data Comes From

Costviewa is built on two public statistical series published by the OECD, covering average annual wages and comparative consumer price levels across member economies. Both series are produced and maintained by the OECD as part of its regular statistical program. Costviewa does not collect, survey, or independently estimate these figures; we present the OECD's own published statistics in a more readable form.

Average Wages

The wage figures shown on this site, including country pages, wage history charts, and the wage calculator, are drawn from OECD Average Annual Wages statistics. Values are converted using purchasing power parity (PPP) and expressed in US dollars at constant 2025 prices, which allows a wage in one country to be compared meaningfully with a wage in another.

These figures are not local-currency wages, not median wages, and not after-tax wages. They describe an average across the whole economy for each country, adjusted so the same amount reflects comparable purchasing power regardless of where it was earned.

Price Levels

Price level figures on this site compare consumer prices across 38 OECD economies in eight categories, from overall consumption down to groups such as food, housing, and transport. These figures come from OECD Comparative Price Levels statistics.

Each index is expressed relative to the United States, fixed at 100. A value above 100 indicates a higher relative price level than the United States for that category and year; a value below 100 indicates a lower one. Data is available for 2022, 2023, and 2024. Each year is shown on its own, and figures from one year are never carried forward or blended into another.

How We Process the Data

Costviewa retrieves data from the OECD's published statistics on a scheduled basis and stores the processed result on our backend. Individual pages read from that stored dataset rather than contacting OECD systems each time a visitor loads a page. This keeps the site fast, and it means every page reflects the same underlying snapshot at any given time.

Missing Values

Not every country reports data for every year or category. Where a figure is unavailable, Costviewa shows a dash ("-") instead of a number. We do not fill missing values with zero, and we do not estimate, interpolate, or substitute a figure from a different year to complete a series. A dash means the data was not present in the source, nothing more.

Limitations

Official statistics are subject to periodic revision, differences in national reporting practices, and publication delays. The figures on this site reflect the most recent OECD data available to us at the time of processing and may not include the very latest revisions. Costviewa is an independent site built on top of this public data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the OECD, and it is not a substitute for the OECD's own publications.