調查：瑞士工資水平居全球之首

It pays to work in Switzerland: employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world, a study by banking group UBS shows, while those in India's Mumbai take home the lowest.

The Swiss cities were also ranked among the top five most expensive in the world in the bank's 2009 "Price and Earnings" international study.

"With its extremely high gross wages and comparatively low tax rates, Switzerland is a very employee-friendly country," the Swiss bank said in a statement.

"No other cities allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva."

The study, published every three years, compares the income and purchasing power of employees in 73 cities across the globe, highlighting wide discrepancies in wages between different regions, and even within the same country.

The biggest gaps were found in Asia, the study said, with Tokyo ranking as one of the world's five costliest cities while the capitals of developing countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and India were all at the bottom of the price range.

Oslo was this year's most expensive city, based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services, followed by Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York.

When rents are factored in, however, New York rises to the top spot, the study said.

This year, the bank said currency fluctuations caused by the global economic crisis affected the rankings of several cities, most notably London, which was the second most expensive city in 2006, but which fell nearly 20 places following the pound's drop earlier this year.

The analysis involved more than 30,000 data points, collected by several independent observers in each city, in March and April, the bank said. All amounts were converted into a single currency before being compared.

The world's cheapest places to live were Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, Manila in the Philippines, and India's Delhi and Mumbai. But the average employee in many of these cities, as well as Jakarta and Nairobi, gets paid some of the world's lowest salaries which have between 11 percent and 15 percent of the purchasing power of a salary in Zurich.

"An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy an iPod nano from an Apple store after nine hours of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai need to work 20 nine-hour days, roughly the equivalent of one month's salary," the study said.

Working hours also varied in the cities surveyed, with the study finding that on average, people in Asian and Middle Eastern cities work much more than the global average of 1,902 hours per year. Overall, the most hours are worked in Cairo, followed by Seoul, while the least hours worked were in Lyon and Paris.

For the full UBS "Prices and Earnings" study click on

在瑞士工作真划算。瑞士聯合銀行集團（UBS）的一項最新調查顯示，蘇黎世和日內瓦的淨工資水平居全球之首，印度孟買最低。

該銀行開展的2009年度“價格與收入”全球調查顯示，蘇黎世和日內瓦還同時躋身全球五大最貴城市。

瑞銀集團在一份聲明中稱，“瑞士的稅後工資水平很高，而稅率又相對較低，因此在這裏工作很舒服。

“沒有哪個城市的淨工資水平能比得上蘇黎世和日內瓦。”

這項調查每三年發佈一次，共對全球73個城市的收入水平和購買力進行了比較。調查發現，不同地區甚至同一國家各城市的薪資水平均存在很大差異。

其中亞洲地區的薪資差異最大，東京躋身全球五大最貴城市，而馬來西亞、菲律賓和印度等發展中國家的首都則排在最後幾名。

奧斯陸被評爲全球最貴城市，蘇黎世、哥本哈根、日內瓦、東京和紐約位居其後。這一排名是通過對包括122種商品和服務的“標準籃”的價格進行計算和比較得出的。

調查稱，如果將房租考慮在內，紐約則是全球最貴的城市。

據瑞銀集團介紹，今年由於全球經濟危機導致幣值波動，幾個城市的排名受到了影響，其中最典型的是倫敦。倫敦於2006年被評爲全球第二大最貴城市，但由於今年年初英鎊貶值，倫敦的排名下降了近20位。

據介紹，這些分析基於各城市的獨立觀察員於今年三、四月份收集的三萬多個數據點，而且所有金額都換算成了單一貨幣進行比對。

全球消費最低的城市爲馬來西亞的吉隆坡、菲律賓的馬尼拉、印度的德里和孟買。但這些城市以及雅加達和內羅比的普通員工的薪資卻爲全球最低，購買力僅爲蘇黎世的11%至15%。

調查稱，在蘇黎世和紐約，普通工薪族工作9小時就可在“蘋果”專賣店買一個iPod nano播放器。而在低收入國家，孟買的工薪層則需要工作20天，每天工作9小時才能買得起，而且這幾乎相當於他們一個月的工資。

受訪城市的工作時長也各不相同。調查發現，平均來看，亞洲和中東地區城市的年工作時間遠多於全球的年平均水平1902小時。總體來看，開羅的工作時間最長，其次是首爾，里昂和巴黎的工作時間最短。

瑞銀集團發佈的“價格與收入”完整榜單可登陸網站查詢。

Vocabulary:

purchasing power: the ability to purchase goods and services（購買力）

currency fluctuation: 幣值波動

wage-earner:工薪族；靠工資生活的人