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Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds (bloomberg.com)
Americans are addicted to their jobs. U.S. workers not only put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. They're also increasingly retiring later and taking fewer vacation days, reports Bloomberg. From the article: A new study tries to measure precisely how much more Americans work than Europeans do overall. The answer: The average person in Europe works 19 percent less than the average person in the U.S. That's about 258 fewer hours per year, or about an hour less each weekday. Another way to look at it: U.S. workers put in almost 25 percent more hours than Europeans. Hours worked vary a lot by country, according to the unpublished working paper by economists Alexander Bick of Arizona State University, Bettina Bruggemann of McMaster University in Ontario, and Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln of Goethe University Frankfurt. Swiss work habits are most similar to Americans', while Italians are the least likely to be at work, putting in 29 percent fewer hours per year than Americans do.
I mean bragging about our victory over socialized medicine is fun and all..
Working more does not necessarily mean more productivity. It's especially hard to be productive when you're burning your limited PTO/vacation allotments for unplanned family illnesses rather than... you know... planned restful downtime.
Need more unions and workers rights!
As Americans measure everything by size and not quality, I am not surprised by this. My USA counterparts are much more at the office, and producing less work than the continental ones. Make a study about effectiveness and I am your man!
Americans have to work more hours and take fewer vacation days because they are poorer at this point, given that USA is running 500,000,000,000 a year trade deficit and has been running that for 2 decades now, Americans cannot afford anything, they are completely stuck in debt and their government in concert with the Federal reserve are destroying the value of their money, value of theirs savings every days. Government spending and money printing, pushing interest rates down to keep borrowing more by doing things like 'operation twist' (the Fed buying long term bonds at negative real interest rates because nobody else would), all of this is expanding the money supply making USD less valuable all the time, thus making Americans less productive every day.
The only way out of this insanity is to restructure the debts, an honest default on the USD denominated debt, stopping all government spending (yes, this means all wars, all SS payments, all Medicare payments, everything). You have to clear away all of your debts, allow the bond holders to lose money so that the interest rates would reset to normal levels (only real market without government intervention can set real interest rates). Get the government out of your money because otherwise you will never have vacations or retirement savings or anything.
You can't handle the truth.
Wage slave here. Recently changed jobs (moved) and new company gives only 8 days a year vacation+Personal Holiday+mandatory holiday. I would love to work less... My wife and I are still discussing if we could afford for me to be Mr. Mom and her to work (she does make 2x what I make)... Lately I have been working the actual hours I get paid for, and have even been taking all of the breaks I am entitled to, but nobody ever takes, and my life satisfaction has gone way up. It's not that most americans are addicted to their job, it's that they are made to feel that if they don't work 120% of the hours they are "paid to work" then they will look like slackers and be let go.
True. It also doesn't take into account the quality of work done. It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
It's highly unlikely that we're addicted to our jobs. It's not usually by any choice that someone will work more and get less vacation. This is a cultural issue that's being pushed on the working classes by employers. I'd love to have a mandatory month of vacation and see everyone work less than 40 hours per week, as they tend to do in Europe.
Bite my shiny metal ass!
What do they have to show for it? That depends on whether you fit in.
If you fit in, you've got money to show for it.
If you don't fit in, you've got nothing to show for it.
Pfft. Get back to me when hours worked equals productivity.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Could be. We may be a simulation, and the server owner(s) sell "interference time" to the highest bidders. "Q" and Trump are customers who come to screw around in the "ant farm" as avatars. (Hillary doesn't give the vibe of a vacationer.)
We are toys, analogous to Toy Story, except we don't know, like Buzz.
Table-ized A.I.
Someone else linked this which seems to indicate that south Europeans are simply lazy sods.
However, when measured as value added per hour worked, Norway had the highest labour productivity level per worker at $46.55, followed by the US at $43.66 and France at $42.99.
So, if a good hardworking Nord tells me I'm doing my work wrong, I'll listen (but may ignore the advice). If a Frank criticizes me for anything, I'll pour out his wine and feed his cheese to the rats.
1. no real work week. a plurality of americans work in the service sector, which is far different than an office job. theyre intentionally scheduled to work 39 hours, or some subset below 40, to avoid insurance from their employer which is mandated by law. This has become less of an issue lately due to the affordable care act, however it doesnt excuse the fact that most service sector does not have a set schedule.
2. no schedules. service sector and manufacturing often have mandatory overtime requirements. You cant be fired, by law, for refusing overtime however in almost all states you can simply fire the worker for no reason at all. Hence, it pays to work overtimes to stay in the good grace of the employer. finally
3. low wages. if youre only working for ten dollars an hour at 20 hours a week, youre working 2-3 jobs to maintain an apartment and a car (a car is generally required in america.) if you have kids or a family, or are a single parent, the burden requires you to pick up far more than 40 hours of work at a low pay grade. this isnt likely to change as the united states has the unique approach of using children as punishment for sex. contraception, abortion, and even simple reproductive education in the United states are inconsistent and wraught with urban legends, religious overtones, and outright pseudoscience.
4. predatory culture of consumption. everything here is offered on credit, with unlimited financing and relatively lax regulation (especially in subprime markets) of terms. In the US its not uncommon for a security guard making $13 an hour to drive a Lexus or Acura luxury sedan, because the terms and conditions of her credit never take into account the fact that a $48,000 touring sedan isnt in their budget. US check caching companies can charge more than 50% interest with impunity, and many do. The average US citizen carries more than ten thousand dollars in debt at any given time.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Productivity and "working more" are not the same thing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah, all my friends who brag about working 10h-12h days spend much of it online social media or shooting the proverbial shit.
I come in at 6:30-7 and I spend 4-5h on mental stuff but then I'm utterly done. Got a good boss, he knows I get the plurality of team's shit done and doesn't blink twice when I head out at lunch at noon and don't come back till 3:30 because I'm playing disc golf or some such, see if I missed anything and head home.
Any of the seatwarmers here try that and they'd be out of work the next day. But then they take a week to solve problems it takes me a day, tops, all because they can't concentrate. Multitasking, my ass.
Productivity and "working more" are not the same thing.
This poster was replying to a post that tried to imply that europeans were just more efficient. Also, one common thread you hear is that productivity starts to fall as hours increase. This poster was saying that for the USA, even working more than other people we still seem to have the most productivity per hour worked. I think it still wouldn't hurt to try to reduce the number of hours worked but to be working the most hours per week and still have the most productivity per hour is actually kindof impressive.
Buried in all the statisics abuse in the summaries there is a paper of significance only to historians. This paper is based on numbers for 2005-2007, before the financial crisis.
It also does not reflect work per person, but work for a theoretical average person age 15-64. Employment rate is a component of this person, so as employment rate drops so does the hours this average person works.
Actually, that feels intuitively wrong, the ~25 hours per week in the US seems way too high when employment rate is factored in, but I am not interested enough in how much we all worked 10 years ago to read the paper more carefully.
Besides, I don't have time for this, I have to get back to work.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
Conventional wisdom says that everything about Europeans is always better than everything about Americans. You get socially rewarded by high-social-status people for saying so. So not working is better than working in this case, regardless of whether that makes sense or not.
Conventional wisdom also states that absolutes are absolutely wrong.
Americans do work hard, you're right. And the productivity numbers are impressive, despite my best efforts to bring down the average.
You are welcome on my lawn.
EU overall trades at a *profit*. There may be some of the smaller countries struggling (notably Greece) but overall EU does not have to internally inflates its economy with QE.
This is a problem with a few key economies that run at huge deficits and go the easy short-term route of internally inflating their economies. Japan had it for decades, US followed, UK joined them.
Americans are addicted to their jobs. U.S. workers not only put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. They're also increasingly retiring later and taking fewer vacation days, ...
Perhaps we're just afraid of being unemployed and destitute. Employers show little loyalty to their employees (Pro Tip: If your company says "employees are our most valuable asset" start looking for another job.), the social safety net is not as strong as in Europe and it's clear that our politicians don't really care about the poor and (arguably) middle class -- look at the various budgets, including the latest Republican House budget which gets 62% from low/moderate income programs while also including tax cuts for the wealthy. (see below).
House GOP Budget Gets 62 Percent of Budget Cuts From Low- and Moderate-Income Programs
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We are NOT addicted to our jobs. We HAVE to work 25% more than everyone else to KEEP our jobs, because workers in the US have ZERO protection against anti-competitive, inhumane, and employment practices that are ILLEGAL in Europe.
We have to compete with workers in countries where there are no labor laws, no environmental standards, no minimum wages, no nothing. We have to compete with people who are essentially state-owned slaves. We're trying to break out in the lead in the race to the bottom, because if we don't, we lose our jobs to one of those people.
And, our own government is leading the charge. So-called "liberals" and their banker buddies have been trying to make indentured servants of middle class America for ages - ever since the New Deal, all while claiming to want to "help."
Help us how, exactly? By making it prohibitively expensive to do things in the US? By imposing onerous and overbearing regulations that don't make sense? By telling me that slinging burgers at McDonalds is economically equivalent to the job I do that I spend $100K on a degree for? Please.
Some regulation is necessary, of course. There is a "right" amount that makes working safe and effective, and that levels the playing field. But, we surpassed that long ago. Today it is an active assault by government on entrepreneurship and individual success.
I've voted for Democrats all my life. As a black man I took it as my duty, having been told by my father who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement that Democrats were the only ones who fought for minority rights. I now know that my father was hoodwinked, and I refuse to be hoodwinked as well.
The fact that a lot of people in the US have multiple jobs working many hours just to be able to buy food and pay rent is not something you should be proud of.
From Work and Leisure in the U.S. and Europe: Why So Different?, hours worked by Europeans and Americans were about the same in the 1960's, although the number of hours were dropping for all every year. In about 1980, the US and Europe diverged, with hours continuing to drop in Europe, but the US plateauing.
Two reasons have been explored. The first is due to tax differences, and indeed labor taxes have been rising in the EU since the end of the 1960's. The other is differences in labor regulations, such as the requirement for contracts, limitations in legal working hours (such as the 35 hour workweek established in 2000 in France).
True. It also doesn't take into account the quality of work done. It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
I think it means that Americans get less paid vacation than Europeans and they are more afraid of losing their jobs.
Yeah, and most of those extra people are 65+'s who can't afford to retire. Nice life.
Bye!
Europeans are also not one hegemon. Liberals love to whine about diversity and then actually ignore it. Or they perhaps suppress the idea that people are different because it doesn't match their simplistic notion of equality.
Each country in Europe is distinct. They are each their own thing that's developed over thousands of years. They are not a mishmash of all ethnicities (like the US tends to be).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Please don't force me to work less just so that you don't feel peer pressure to work more.
Multitasking just means you do a lot of jobs at once, poorly.
True. It also doesn't take into account the quality of work done. It might just mean Europeans are 25% more efficient.
European countries and cultures are just too variable to make that assumption. Norway is not the same as Germany which is not the same as France which is not the same as Italy which is not the same as Greece which is not the same as Romania and so on and so on.
Flat unemployment rates:
US unemployment: 6.1
France unemployment: 10.4
https://data.oecd.org/unemp/un...
These are people who are seeking work of course. If you 'give up' searching for work, you fall off the board.
For raw employment rates:
US: 68.2
France: 63.6
https://data.oecd.org/emp/empl...
Assuming you subtract the difference, you're left with roughly the same number of people 'not seeking employment' in either country:
US: 25.7%
France: 26%
Bye!
That is wrong.
They get less done.
The rest are currency conversion errors and mountain high differences in financial markets etc.
A typical worker, earning less then lets say $50,000 per year, is not even half as productive/efficient in the US as in Europe. Otherwise all your jobs would not be outsourced to China, India or other asian countries.
The GNP/capita is no measure at all when you can manipulate local costs, exchange rates and can invent artificial spendings or gains.
A country that has a financial market that dominates 50% of the money flow has obviously twice the GNP versus a country that has no financial market. But: nothing was produced. There is no productivity at all
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.