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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 Hours worked vary a lot by country, according to the unpublished working paper by economists Alexander Bick of Arizona State University, Bettina Bruggemann of McMaster University in Ontario, and Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln of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.
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!
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.
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.
I am very interested in how they defined the productivity per worker. The article does not state that. From the numbers they show, my gut feeling is that they simply divided the gross national product by the number of employees, which is a wildly inaccurate way of defining productivity. Norway is not significantly more productive than Sweden or Denmark - it just has a lot of oil and those two countries do not. The relative sizes of the financial sector in different countries adds a similar distortion and there are many more factors to consider. How much a worker actually contributes to productivity is very hard to measure objectively. The GDP per worker does not tell much of that story.
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.
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.
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
We will soon find out, I fear. The UK has already been talking about which employee rights will be removed once it leaves the EU. Time off proportional to overtime looks like it will be the first thing to go, but they keep talking about making the UK more "competitive", by which they of course mean lower wages, longer hours and fewer expenses like safety equipment and adaptations for people with disabilities.
So it is likely we will find out just what that does to productivity soon, giving us an opportunity to compare the EU and US models.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.