Workwear Guru has listed down rankings for the best and worst nations in the world, to be a construction worker, based on wages, cost of living and health and safety. Switzerland has the best blend of these factors, based mainly on its average salary of $80,000, the highest in the world. Next is the UK, where wages have been buoyed by a post-Brexit shortage of proficient labourers. Average salaries there have touched $58,000, as per the ranking, and it has an 8% accident rate, one of the lowest in the world. The firm calculated safety scores from polls held by Lloyd’s Register Foundation and average wages using Numbeo’s and world population's Cost of Living index. Belgium is in the third position, the massive markets of the US in the fourth spot and Canada in fifth, despite accident rates of 20% and 22% respectively. The American construction sector is likely to surge 3.1% in 2022 and trade bodies have predicted that 430,000 jobs will have to be generated to fulfil demand. The report also observed which US states are most beneficial for workers. It is Illinois, based on the current Chicago building boom, followed by Georgia and Michigan. After the microstates of Luxembourg and Singapore, China is in the eighth spot – somewhat surprisingly given its low per capita GDP as against the other nations in the top 10. However, construction workers can anticipate earning $32,000, the cost of living is a little more than half of the US and the accident rate is 9%. Additionally, China’s domestic economy is likely to produce $2.1 trillion in building projects by 2030, guaranteeing there will be no employment shortage. On the other side, the lowest average wage for a construction worker – $875 a month – is paid in Uzbekistan, making that nation the least desirable place in the world to work, with the exception of Yemen. The most unsafe areas to be a construction worker are Myanmar and Uganda. A recent report conducted by Uganda’s National Building Review Board observed that just 6% of sites examined were being supervised by professionally qualified staff (see further reading). Myanmar has the highest incident rate of 58%, over 14 times higher than Poland, which has a rate of 4%. Image Source