India is a booming tech hub with a talented workforce of developers, programmers, designers, and engineers. For global employers, India is one of the top destinations to hire full-time employees across industries.
But before extending an offer, it’s important to research the hiring landscape—and not just labor laws and compliance requirements. You should also familiarize yourself with the average salary in India for different roles and levels of seniority. This way, your job offers are competitive and demonstrate your commitment to fair compensation.
Here’s a guide to facts and figures on minimum and average salaries in India, plus the factors that influence how much someone earns.
What’s the average salary in India?
According to India Data Map, the current average Indian salary is equivalent to $337 per week or $4,044 per year. Median income estimates in India also fall in this range.
Take averages and medians with a grain of salt. Some people earn significantly more or less than others, with salaries that range vastly based on the geographical area or role. And data from both the highest and lowest earners pours into a country’s average and median salary figures.
What’s the minimum wage in India?
Understanding the minimum wage in India helps establish the legal baseline for compensation. It’s also important because it reflects how local regulators value different types of work.
India’s government has a floor-level minimum wage of roughly two US dollars per day. But minimum wage varies depending on the state, the geographical area’s development level, the employee’s industry, and their occupation.
The worker’s skill level—unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled, and highly-skilled—also influences the minimum salary in India. These distinctions make for a complicated system. For example, India has different categories of employment with numerous jobs under each heading. Unskilled labor alone accounts for over 2,000 types of jobs, with varying minimum wages for each.
In addition, Indian employees also earn statutory benefits. These include welfare payments, gratuities based on seniority, insurance, and leave provisions (like maternity leave).
Avoid relying on minimum wage standards when determining salary compensation. These wages are unlikely to cover the costs of living, let alone be competitive to candidates with other international offers. Also, be prepared to extend statutory benefits and ideally offer packages that go above local minimums. An employer of record (EOR), like Oyster, can help you compliantly navigate benefits administration from wherever you are.
Factors that influence salary in India
Various factors determine salary amounts in India, and understanding the cultural context can help you craft an informed compensation offer for a professional from this country. Here’s what you need to know:
Age and experience
Higher salaries often come with experience, and experience, with age. Just like in other countries, workers in India tend to earn the most during the height of their career before tapering off and heading toward retirement.
As you consider the costs of hiring in India, avoid ageism and base salaries on skills and experience—not on a person’s age—even if the country’s payment statistics indicate age-based wage disparities.
Education levels
People with higher levels of education in India often earn more than others. The country categorizes wages by skill level, meaning that those with formal or on-the-job education have higher salaries. For example, a construction worker with little experience earns less than one who has gained niche abilities.
That said, these designations are unlikely to affect highly-skilled professionals, who often earn outside of the traditional minimum wage structure regardless. International employers hiring highly educated professionals should base their salary benchmarks on what international competitors offer for remote work in this market.
Industry
According to data from Indeed, India’s highest-paying roles are in industries like medicine, technology, and banking. Given this data, if you’re planning on hiring tech talent from India, the wages you offer will likely fall into the highest-earning categories. Professionals in this industry earn a salary of anywhere from around $10,000 and up, with many mid-range roles hovering around $15,000 annually. This said, professionals accustomed to working with international companies may ask for higher compensation that more closely resembles US salaries.
Gender
India has a relatively high gender wage gap, with women earning about one-third less than men. While this fact isn’t necessarily representative of all industries and types of work, it’s still apparent in the salary-by-gender averages, which estimate significantly higher salaries for men.
While statistics may favor men’s earnings, companies shouldn’t. By following an “equal pay for equal work” mentality, international hirers can fairly offer comparable salaries to people of all genders.
Location
Studies suggest that states with stronger economies are also those with higher salaries. Familiarize yourself with the going rates for work in the cities you’re hiring, as well as the cost of living, to help determine what’s fair. For example, talent in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, where incomes and costs of living are higher than in other regions, should earn more than their rural counterparts.
Average salary by profession in India
Global hires tend to seek talent from India for remote work, especially in tech (or tech-adjacent industries). The following table shows the average salary in India per month and year for typical roles in these fields and can serve as a useful guide for hirers. All data is from PayScale and is subject to change.
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Thinking about hiring a talented remote professional from India? Go ahead. Oyster has your back.
Oyster helps you maintain compliance and speed when hiring and paying international employees or independent contractors. You make a fair compensation offer, and Oyster handles the rest, streamlining everything from onboarding to payday. Oyster’s Global Payroll platform helps with accurate tax withholding and benefits administration and facilitates quick, automated payments to over 180 countries. And with Oyster’s EOR services, you can confidently hire employees without needing to establish a foreign entity.
FAQ
Navigating an international economy is never easy. Here are the answers to a few common questions that other employers hiring Indian employees or contractors have asked.
What’s a good salary in India?
Defining a “good” salary in India depends on several factors, primarily where a person lives and how many dependents they have. A person living in a major urban area, where the cost of living is high, will need to earn more to make ends meet than someone in a rural area where day-to-day costs are less. In some cities, people earn roughly double the national salary average to live comfortably.
What’s the average salary for a CEO in India?
According to Glassdoor data, the average annual salary for a CEO in India is 2,500,000 Indian Rupees, or roughly $30,000 USD.
About Oyster
Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.
Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.
