Global Employer Burden Index 2026

The Global Employer Burden Index ranks 192 countries by the statutory cost and rigidity of employing a worker. It combines three sourced statutory measures: employer social security contribution rate (weight 0.50), statutory severance pay for economic or redundancy dismissal (0.30), and statutory notice period (0.20). Each measure is expressed as a percentile rank (0–100) among the included countries and combined into a single composite score from 0–100, where a higher score indicates a greater employer burden. A country is only scored when it has an approved, dated value for all three measures. Fifty-eight countries lacking one or more measures are excluded, with no gap-filling or estimation. Data is sourced from the OECD, World Bank Employing Workers indicators, ILO EPLex, ISSA country profiles, PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries, national legislation, and CLEISS. Every value in the accompanying files includes its source, source URL, and the date it was last verified. The 2026 edition scores 192 countries. Bolivia has the highest employer burden with a composite score of 90.8, while the United States ranks among the countries with the lightest employer burden at 164th out of 192. One limitation is that severance and notice period values for many countries are based on the World Bank Employing Workers (Doing Business) 2019 dataset and may not reflect subsequent legislative changes. Users should refer to the “as of” date for each individual value. This edition represents a snapshot in time, with corrections and future annual editions published under the same Zenodo concept DOI. The dataset includes two files: employer-burden-index-2026.csv, containing one row per scored country with its rank, composite score, three pillar scores, three raw statutory inputs, four unscored contextual fields, and the source, source URL, and “as of” date for each scored field. employer-burden-index-2026.json, containing the complete dataset along with the methodology, data provenance, and the list of excluded countries. Produced by Employ Borderless Hiring Intelligence. Citation: Schuchmann, R. (2026). Global Employer Burden Index 2026 [Data set]. Employ Borderless. https://doi.org/