You’re right to sanity-check. Our number is hours of pay needed for a single renter on a new lease, not hours actually worked.
Using your own anchors: if essentials ≈ 70% of median net pay and an effective month is ~140 paid hours (vacation/holidays), then
hours = 0.7 × 140 ≈ 98h — nowhere near 200h.
So why would our Nordic rows show >200h? Likely method artifacts:
Rent input: we used current market 1-BR rents (upper bound). Many people have in-place/regulated rents, own, or share, which slashes hours per person.
Hour divisor: some wage series forced monthly ÷ 160–168h instead of ~140 effective hours → inflates the ratio ~10–20%.
Geography mix: capital-city prices vs national wages can overstate costs.
Using your own anchors: if essentials ≈ 70% of median net pay and an effective month is ~140 paid hours (vacation/holidays), then hours = 0.7 × 140 ≈ 98h — nowhere near 200h.
So why would our Nordic rows show >200h? Likely method artifacts:
Rent input: we used current market 1-BR rents (upper bound). Many people have in-place/regulated rents, own, or share, which slashes hours per person.
Hour divisor: some wage series forced monthly ÷ 160–168h instead of ~140 effective hours → inflates the ratio ~10–20%.
Geography mix: capital-city prices vs national wages can overstate costs.