Sri Lanka ranks 120th among 130 countries in a global comparison of minimum wages adjusted for purchasing power, with a monthly figure of $200.
The ranking places Sri Lanka below every other South Asian economy in the dataset. Pakistan ranks 68th at $570, Nepal 78th at $490, Bangladesh 89th at $379 and India 111th at $233. Only 10 countries rank lower than Sri Lanka: Niger, Bhutan, Haiti, Guinea, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia.
What the figures measure
The comparison adjusts each country’s wage floor for purchasing power parity, which accounts for differences in local living costs and what a wage will actually buy. The figures are not dollar salaries, and they exclude taxes, benefits and cost-of-living differences within individual countries.
Switzerland tops the list at $3,804 a month, though its minimum wages are set regionally rather than through a national floor. Germany follows at $2,928, the United Kingdom at $2,902 and the Netherlands at $2,876. South Korea records Asia’s highest figure at $2,362 in 11th place, and Japan is 16th at $1,839.
The United States ranks 25th at $1,257, a calculation based on the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009. Many US states set higher floors.
Two caveats on the source
The Daily Mirror carried the ranking under a headline describing it as an “ILO wage study.” The compilation was in fact published by Visual Capitalist, an infographics publisher, drawing on figures from ILOSTAT, the statistical database of the International Labour Organization. The Daily Mirror’s own report states this correctly.
The underlying figures are also 2024 data, meaning the ranking reflects wage floors as they stood roughly two years ago and would not capture any subsequent revision to Sri Lanka’s minimum wage. ILOSTAT further notes that where a country has no single national minimum, other applicable wage floors are substituted to allow comparison — a methodological choice that affects how some countries place.
Update: Ada Derana files the ranking, and it draws a political response
Ada Derana published its own report of the ranking on Friday, correctly attributing the compilation to Visual Capitalist working from ILO statistics. Its account matched the Daily Mirror’s on Sri Lanka’s placing, the $200 figure and the South Asian comparisons, and added the full top ten: Switzerland ($3,804), Germany ($2,928), the United Kingdom ($2,902), the Netherlands ($2,876), Australia ($2,819), Belgium ($2,752), Iceland ($2,730), New Zealand ($2,673), France ($2,465) and Ireland ($2,433).
The ranking has since been taken up politically. The Dinana Dakuna collective cited it on Friday in arguing that IMF-framed fiscal stability masks a collapse in real incomes, pairing it with UNDP vulnerability data. There was still no government or employer response to the ranking itself on the record.
