Recruitment consultancy firm Mercer looked at the pay packets of workers in 75 countries to place the Swiss in first place.
However, the poorly performing global economy has seen big changes in pay scales at all levels – particularly for managers, according to the International Geographic Salary Differentials report.
Mercer found the sharpest pay drops were in Eastern Europe – Serbia has fallen 14 places in the league table – and opportunities in Latin America are now paying more.
Niklaus Kobel, a Mercer senior researcher, said: “The top countries for increasing net pay span the globe and, for the first time, three of the world’s top six come from Latin America.”
Worst countries for expats
He added that other than Switzerland topping the rankings, there are some interesting variations in their annual survey.
Indeed, Switzerland ranks in first place in four out of the six careers looked at, dropping to third for upper middle management pay and second for lower middle management.
Alongside Serbia, the other countries to perform the worst for expat pay are Spain, Algeria, Indonesia, Estonia and Lithuania.
The country with the biggest gain for expat pay is Venezuela, particularly at their management levels.
Peru and Chile also posted big gains, as did Sweden, New Zealand and Canada.
The survey is used by companies to ensure they are paying the going rate to attract expats to work overseas though the bottom five countries will struggle, say Mercer, to attract talent because of their political instability.
They are: Algeria, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
China concerns
The Mercer report effectively backs-up another recent survey they conducted which revealed that increasing numbers of workers are being given the opportunity to work overseas to help build their skills and experience.
However, most of them are opting to work in just a handful of English-speaking locations which are the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
Employers increasingly want their workers to head to China, but the country consistently comes bottom in polls of expats asked where they want to work in and which the worst destination is.
Expats in China say there are concerns over the language, culture and healthcare.
Emerging economies are also popular with employers with Brazil and Russia increasingly providing opportunities but the fast-growing economies in Latin America are offering excellent pay packages for the right candidates.
Switzerland’s position as a choice destination for expats was underlined by another Mercer survey which put Zurich second for offering the world’s best quality of living.
