Dutch smartphone maker Fairphone has published its 2025 Impact Report, specifically, what factory workers in the electronics supply chain are actually paid compared to what it costs to live.
Research cited in the report identifies a considerable gap between legally mandated minimum wages and what workers actually need to meet living wages in major electronics manufacturing hubs. The pattern, the report notes, tends to track with profit margins: higher-margin technology firms generally offer better pay, while lower-margin, lower-tech operations see the widest shortfalls.
Fairphone CEO Raymond van Eck argues that paying a living wage to bridge the gap between actual wages and the local living wage standards adds just over one dollar per device, a cost he describes as a negligible fraction of the retail price of a smartphone. The research exposes how margin pressure is not an adequate reason for the industry to continue underpaying the people who assemble its products.
In 2025, reporting indicated that base pay for an iPhone assembler at Foxconn in China stood at $295 per month (the legal minimum, but less than half the average local wage in Zhengzhou). Neither China nor India, which now assembles around 20% of all iPhones, has a nationally mandated living wage.
Fairphone’s proposed path forward includes designing products for longevity and repairability, paying factory workers living wages, and supporting artisanal mining communities. Whether competitors with far larger production volumes and tighter cost pressures will adopt similar measures remains an open question.
Read the Full 2025 Impact Report.
