We’ve put a dollar coin into the PoliticalSalaries.com data crunching machine, cranked the handle and here it is…

Top 10 highest-paid political leaders in the world (July 2022):

The world’s best-paid head of government is Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose annual salary of US$1.57 million (2.2 million Singapore dollars) makes him by far the highest-paid politician in the world.

Second-best paid is Swizz president Ignazio Cassis, who earns US$477,8000 (CHF 466,581) as head of Switzerland’s federal council.

However, the Swiss presidency is a rotating role so Cassis will only be in the job for one year before being replaced by another member of the council.

Don’t feel too bad for him though. Swiss federal council members are the best-paid legislators in the world so Cassis’s pay will drop by only around US$12,000 when he hands the presidency over to somebody else.

US president Joe Biden is the third highest-paid leader in the world, earning US$400,000 per year.

However, the US president’s salary has been frozen since 2001 and doesn’t look likely to rise any time soon. If it doesn’t rise in the next couple of years, Biden is likely to drop down the world leader salary rankings before the end of his first term in office.

Most likely, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese (US$387,200 / AU$564,360) will leap-frog the US president into third place, given Australian politicians’ pay rises by a small percentage most years.

Making up the top 10 are:

Olaf Scholz (Germany) US$348,300 / € 342,000
Karl Nehammer (Austria) US$334,200 / € 328,160
Justin Trudeau (Canada) US$292,500 / C$379,000
Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand) US$291,800 / NZ$471,049
Mette Frederiksen (Denmark) US$228,300 / kr 1667972
Alexander De Croo (Belgium) US$225,100 / € 221,000

See more world leader salaries

Salaries listed above are based on the best sources we could find and converted into US dollars using exchange rates

Note: I’ve seen other rankings (e.g. here) that included the president of Mauritania as one of the highest-paid world leaders, supposedly earning an annual salary of around US$330,000. I’ve not found any credible source for that figure and have doubts about its accuracy. Therefore, I won’t be adding the figure to PoliticalSalaries.com without further verification.