A montly wage employee is usually assumed to work five days a week and 7.5 hours/day.

Then there is holiday money, which is 9% of your brutto salary (at minimum. If you've been working to your employer longer than that, it's about 11% or whatever the labor unions in your field of work have negotiated for you, the figures I gave you are the minimums stated by the law). In practice, it's four weeks of paid vacation every year with the holiday money paid to you before the vacation. I think the biggest difference is that US has no paid vacations.

Edit: The hourly wage can be calculated from the monthly wage if there's overtime. Overtime has to be ordered by the employer before you are entitled to overtime compensations (the compensation in Finland is 50% of hourly wage for 2 hours of overtime a day, 100% of hourly wage for more than 2 hours of overtime every day. Also, I think Saturdays are 50% increased hourly wages and Sundays 100% increased hourly wages).

Second edit: This is how it is in Finland, dunno about Norway.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2008 10:28AM by DurNominator.