Top 10% salary by country: the income that puts you in the top decile
What annual salary puts you in the top 10% of earners? It depends heavily on the country. The table below lists the 90th-percentile (top-decile) annual salary threshold for 9countries, each taken from that government's own official wage statistics. Figures are gross (pre-tax) annual salaries except where marked net. Approximate USD values use nominal exchange rates for comparison only — they are ranking thresholds, not cost-of-living or purchasing-power (PPP) adjusted figures.
| # | Country | Top 10% threshold (local) | ≈ USD (nominal) | Source (year) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $152,288 | $152,288 | U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 1-year PUMS (2024) |
| 2 | Germany | €100,719 | $114,727 | Destatis (Federal Statistical Office) (2025) |
| 3 | Australia | A$153,504 | $108,822 | ABS Employee Earnings and Hours (2025) |
| 4 | United Kingdom | £76,903 | $101,872 | UK ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (2025) |
| 5 | Hong Kong | HK$615,600 | $78,479 | Hong Kong C&SD (2025) |
| 6 | Spain | €52,515 | $59,819 | Spain INE, EAES (2024) |
| 7 | France | €52,008 (net) | $59,241 | France INSEE (Insee Première n°2079) (2024) |
| 8 | Italy | €44,962 | $51,215 | Italy INPS, Osservatorio (2024) |
| 9 | Taiwan | NT$1,336,000 | $42,127 | Taiwan DGBAS (2024) |
How to read this
Each threshold is the salary at the 90th percentile of that country's official wage distribution: earn more than it and you are in the top 10% of employees. Definitions vary slightly by source — most are full-time or all-employee gross annual salary; France is net annual pay (after social contributions, before income tax), as published by INSEE; Italy's INPS figures include part-time and part-year contracts, which lowers the whole distribution. Approximate USD is a nominal-FX conversion for ranking only and does not reflect what the money buys locally.
Want your exact rank? salary.gg scores your salary against your age cohort and the whole population using each government's official data — free and with no signup. Check your salary percentile, or see the same salary ranked across countries.
Sources: national statistical offices as listed above (ONS, Census Bureau, Destatis, INSEE, INE, INPS, ABS, DGBAS, C&SD). Percentile thresholds are computed directly from each government's published wage distribution. Countries whose official data is published only by age cohort (e.g. Korea, Japan) are omitted here because they have no single all-ages top-decile figure.