How does hourly compensation differ from hourly wages or earnings?
Wages or earnings do not include employer payments into funds for the benefit of workers, which in many countries account for a large proportion of total compensation. In addition, some items of direct pay, such as year-end bonuses, may not be included in country definitions of wages or earnings. Consequently, comparisons based on the more readily available average earnings statistics published by many countries are only partial measures of employer compensation costs and may not be comparable because of country differences in the definition of average earnings.
