Yes, pre-tax income is also different, even if you use "pre-tax" in the broadest sense (cost per employee, but without expenses like office space that happen to

Yes, pre-tax income is also different, even if you use "pre-tax" in the broadest sense (cost per employee, but without expenses like office space that happen to scale worth employee count but are not related at all to the contract). But if you look at cost per employee you still see much higher numbers in the US, that's what you were talking about, right? I think the explanation is that the US simply has enough global dominators in their field (e.g. Google basically eating up the non-Chinese ad market over the whole range from local business directories to the brand awareness stuff that used to make TV stations a big business) that they define the market, pulling up the bids of weaker bidders, whereas in other places outliers looks ASML are so much of an exception that the bids they need to get whoever they want hardly influences market rate.