Only by US standards. You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe. The US is a huge outlier regarding salaries compared to practically anywhere else.
You'd be well bellow the gross average everywhere in the EU, even the poorest countries. Outside of the EU you might have a shot in Albania or Moldova, but you'd lack all the infrastructure and stability you'd need for large scale manufacturing.
Europe's minimum wages are much higher in comparison[3].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China
[2]https://www.india-briefing.com/news/guide-minimum-wage-india...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
https://topsourceworldwide.com/international-salaries/
note that China is 40% of salary as a payroll tax, which tops the list.
What you term "socialistic" countries handle government services via taxes more than levies on employers.
It looks like the employer cost in China is 40.92%[0], while the highest percentage in Europe is 32.4% in Italy, and Switzerland imposes only 9.5%.
I just checked job postings in Bulgaria(the poorest EU country) and $11k is just a bit above entry level salary for unskilled uneducated manufacturing workers. It's higher with taxes, experience, etc. and there's a lot of better options at that level.
And the truth is even if you can find cheap employees in Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Macedonia, infrastructure is not there and investment wouldn't make much sense because there's not a lot of people here that are okay with such low wages.
Can you please provide some sources for that claim?
For example [1] says that the lowest, starting salary is already over 3000. And the salaries for teachers grow with work experience.
[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/10/12/polish-teachers-among...
Family who are teachers - but I guess the bottom of the scale has increased now, that's my mistake.
Also observe how the top of the scale is 64578PLN/year, and according to the article, teachers reach that level in about 20 years on average. So even after working in the profession for 20 years, you don't reach the average wage for your country when working as a teacher.
I suspect that you do reach the average salary as an experienced teacher.
The unemployment rate is very low, so to be able to hire factory employees you'd realistically need to offer at least 5000 PLN (~1000 USD) in gross salary.
You'd have a much better chance to open such factory in Spain or Portugal, the salaries are similar, but you'll have an easier time hiring + green energy from sun.
I don't know about eastern Europe. In Spain, we are in the south, you can't pay 530 per month. Legal minimum salary is around double that number, then you need to add SS (30 to 40% of that) and just FYI, there's no way people will work in a factory for minimum wage anyway, so think of 2k for entry positions.
That is obviously not true, unless you exclude a lot of countries from "anywhere else".
:shrug:
* Euro zone, EU is less
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d... https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages
But to be fair, US software engineer salaries are super high compared to everywhere except Switzerland.
However there’s still no way in hell a grocery store anywhere in Europe is going to pay someone $26/h.
I wonder, though, how well this holds up if you look at the lower quintiles of the income distribution in each country--i.e., if you compare poorer workers instead of average workers. I would not be surprised if the bottom quintile earners in the U.S. make less than their counterparts in the EU, and perhaps elsewhere.
Edit: OECD also provides average earnings by activity and if you look at average earnings in "industry," the U.S. is, indeed, far from the top, with many countries in Eastern Europe ranking quite highly. Of course, that could just as easily be an effect of the types of industry located in each country, more than anything. You may still need to pay an American far more to build an iPhone than a Slovenian, which is a question I don't think this data meaningfully addresses.
https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/employee-compensation-by-acti...
Not saying the US is not more expensive, but it's not a "huge outlier" by any means.
That supply chain part was traditionally a strong draw for electronics manufacturing to be done in China as you can get parts from down the street rather than the next city or state or country over.