23 ms·

Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

• cletus 10y ago
  Thing is, in the software world at least, you earn >25% more than Europeans in the US. Just look at salaries in London. Given the extraordinary cost of living, salaries are pitiful. Why is that?
  • ythl 10y ago
    Because European governments take a lot more out of your salary before it reaches you in exchange for social services (pensions, healthcare, etc). Unlike America where you are expected to either drop a stack of bills just to see the doctor or die in the streets.
    • gervase 10y ago
      I think the parent is actually referring to pre-tax salaries; the baselines are much lower (last I checked) in the EU relative to the US.
      • walshemj 10y ago
        A senior ie 10 years experience in London is unlikely to make more than $70k which is about half what the starting salary is for google in the valley
        • vidarh 10y ago
          There are plenty of senior dev jobs in London that pay far more than that. I passed that level in London 15 years ago. At that time I had about 6 years experience. It depends much more on niche, how well your market yourself, and what type of companies you work for.
          • walshemj 10y ago
            Perm or contractor?
            • vidarh 10y ago
              Perm. Contractor rates need to be much higher to be anything worth talking about. EDIT: Basically, never accept the first offer. Brits rarely negotiate, but I negotiated up my last salary 50% over the initial offer, after going in specifically knowing the top end of the stated salary band was lower than what I'd consider. If you take the initial offer, you're being paid less than your employer was willing to pay. I've never had an offer pulled, in London or elsewhere, over trying to negotiate it. I've declined positions where I didn't get it quite high enough, though. If you take the initial offer, then you'll be very lucky to get a good deal. And aim for niches. E.g. PHP devs are dime a dozen. Talk to a recruiter and flat out ask them what skills they get most demand for and highest salaries for now. Just be honest and tell them you're considering what to skill up in. I do backend/devops stuff with AWS and other cloud services etc, and that'd doing ok, but there are other opportunities. And network as much as you can. You'll get your salary up a lot if you're coming in via a suitable recommendation rather than the normal hiring channels.
          • walshemj 10y ago
            ah just realized I used $ instead on £ there.
      • gtirloni 10y ago
        Some payroll taxes have to paid by employers (i.e. not subtracted from monthly salary). If they are higher than in the US, employers have less incentive to offer big salaries. Just did a quick calculation for Brazil and for an employee that earns $1000/month, the employer has to spend $1528/month ($1000 salary + $528 in taxes and mandatory benefits).
      • throwaway1892 10y ago
        At least in France companies pay tax on your salary so even if you receive 2000 € for your salary, the company would have paid 3000 € (salary + taxes). Then you pay the tax on your revenue. Then the company pay tax on revenue. Then politics wonder why France is not attractive to investments
    • vinay427 10y ago
      About 90% of Americans overall have health insurance. Most full-time tech jobs in the US at the companies that would pay more than European salaries will include sufficient health insurance. I'm not sure who you're referring to dying in the streets because of a lack of medical treatment due to financial limitations.
      • 67726e 10y ago
        Well, maybe not die in the streets, but in my state the best, most expensive health insurance I can purchase still doesn't kick in until I've dropped several thousand out of pocket. I get decent insurance through my job, but it's still fucking stupid how much I have to spend before it kicks in. Even then, there are all kinds of clauses and stipulations and loop holes. I guarantee if and when I really need my insurance it will fail me and I'll still come out in debt. There simply is not a "pay money and don't worry" insurance plan out there.
        • chris_7 10y ago
          Even worse, when I go to the doctor, I have no idea what I'm going to pay. You can possible decode it, but good luck - and if he or she sends something to a lab, etc. one day a bill will just show up and you'll just have to pay it. The doctor doesn't say "we can do a lab test, it'll cost you $40" or anything. Imagine if your dry cleaner wouldn't tell you what the charge would be until your clothes had already been cleaned!
          • 67726e 10y ago
            Oh, and that bill is probably gonna be full of medical coding mistakes too. Tests and procedures and all kinds of things marked up, put in the wrong category, and so forth. Expect to have to wrestle the insurance and the hospital for corrections.
            • cableshaft 10y ago
              I've had to do that once. I got denied short term medical insurance because they said I had diabetes (this is before Obamacare). I've never had diabetes. I called my doctor and it turned out they coded one of my visits wrong and said I had diabetes, and it had been in everyone's system for at least a couple of years. Wonderful. Got it fixed, at least.
    • chris_7 10y ago
      This doesn't add up though, people often talk about salaries of 60k Euro or less, and then you have to pay higher taxes on that. A $65k salary would be a joke for a software engineer in the US.
    • criddell 10y ago
      Yeah, but we're talking about programmers. We typically get excellent health care benefits.
    • oblio 10y ago
      In almost all European cities except for London (where the cost of living compensates for the disparity, anyway), you're lucky if you're making EUR 70k per year as a senior developer. From what I've heard in the US a senior developer in a comparable location, i.e. West Coast/East Coast makes at least $ 100k per year. On top of that, many American software companies give out stock, which almost no European companies do.
      • tirant 10y ago
        That's if you find yourself in an ideal condition: No health issues or no social issues that blocked you from having a perfect career. If for any unfortunate reason you are not able to land a decent-payed job, the situation in Europe is much, much better. So yes, top workers life Software Engineers may earn less. But the safety net for the whole population is way better in Europe.
    • involans 10y ago
      The less inflammatory way of putting that is that the costs of employing someone in most European countries are rather high; up to 100% of salary in many cases.
    • tyfon 10y ago
      So let's compare tax rates in the US vs Norway where I live, arguably a "socialist bastion" according to the rest of the world! Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates Corporate tax Norway: 25% Corporate tax US: 35% Individual (Min/Max) Norway: 0%/46.9% Individual (Min/Max) US: 0%-3%/52.9% Payroll tax Norway: 0%-14.1% Payroll tax US: 20.2% VAT Norway: 10%-25% VAT US: 0%-11.725% The tax systems are different though, for Norway, the max tax bracket is from 950.000 NOK (a bit over 100k USD). You do not pay tax until you make around 80k and the rates are progressive. You do have loads of deductibles though like paid interest, children, transportation etc. So I wouldn't say we pay vastly more in tax here, but we still get social services. The salaries here are not on EU level, but a bit higher. As an analyst I make about 1.1 million NOK/year. From that I pay around 350k in tax and that is not too bad compared to what we get in exchange. I actually have no objections to paying the tax. Edit: BTW, I work 37.5 hours a week and two of the days are from home. And I have 27 paid vacation days a year + the public holidays :) Edit2: the tax stuff was mangled, reformatting
      • thebspatrol 10y ago
        I'm not sure how researched on US taxation you are, however the posted numbers mean absolutely nothing. The effective tax rates are incredibly low for the upper class. Miniscule. The middle class pays on average around 25% in income tax. The good news is this means there's an incredibly simple answer for why the US is underinsured and undereducated: the average american is not willing to pay the amount of money it costs to insure and educate the lower class.
      • abysmallyideal 10y ago
        There aren't many non-european Americans willing to live in Scandinavia or europe over the US barring extraordinary circumstances. A significant amount of foreign, non 'white', skill prefers the US over say Norway. Considering that, "socialism" in the context of Scandinavia,europe, etc isn't an attractive option by a long shot in a more global, and highly diverse 'market'. The benefits of a selective style of socialism like Norway may be attractive to say similar mindsets and cultural effects comfortable with a homogenous idealism of utopia, but having the benefits of a highly diverse and varying mindsets and cultures has its own positive effects even with the negatives. Sadly in the US, the idealisms of socialism often also comes with certain european-centric identities, or commonly bastardized into race ideologies where their proponents emphasize a socialist "utopia" like Scandinavia. These people emphasize this socialism on the basis of certain similar attributes where they can afford such promises to a small percentage, through the removal or exclusion of those they decide are not like them. Breaking down the US economic system, one would be quick to notice that there does indeed exist a kind of socialist utopia much inline with euro-centric ideologies. One that even dwarfs the so called socialist bastion of Scandinavia and europe.
    • vidarh 10y ago
      The tax difference is generally less than people think. 5-6 European countries are very high, with Belgium in a class by itself, but most are not that many percentage point above the US.
    • refurb 10y ago
      Most tech jobs in the US come with very generous health insurance with pretty small out of pockets. And it's mostly paid by the company.
  • cmdrfred 10y ago
    We also have higher costs of living when you factor in healthcare costs and lack of public transportation. A healthy 20 year old can pay $300 a month for insurance that covers nothing until you hit 10k in expenses.
    • eeZah7Ux 10y ago
      Where is "we"?
      • imron 10y ago
        Is there any other developed nation where you pay $300 a month for health insurance and it doesn't cover you for the first $10,000 of expenses?
        • 7Z7 10y ago
          I believe the point was undoing the US-normative "we", rather than questioning the location of the speaker.
        • big_youth 10y ago
          Have anything beyond hyperbole? The highest healthcare costs per capita: US $8,713 Switzerland $6,325 Norway $5,862 Netherlands $5,131 Sweden $4,904 Expensive yes, but not extreme compared to some of the other richest European countries. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/11/14/24-7-wall-st-countries-spend-most-health-care/75771044/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/11/14/24-7...
          • pessimizer 10y ago
            Are you replying to the correct comment, or do Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden offer $300 per month insurance that doesn't cover the first $10,000? edit: and anyway, your link vehemently disagrees with you on "extreme." "While higher health care spending generally leads to better health outcomes, this is famously not the case in the United States. The country, which is one of the world's wealthiest, spends by far the most on health care. The United States spends around $8,700 per capita each year on health care, more than double the OECD average and well more than second place Switzerland. "Despite the high spending, Americans are not anywhere near the world's healthiest. More than 35% of Americans are obese, one of the highest rate in the world, and exceptionally high compared with other countries spending the most on health. The United States is also the only top 10 country for health spending where the life expectancy does not exceed 80 years. Also, perhaps as a consequence of poor economic and social factors as well as the inefficient spending, adverse health outcomes such as infant mortality have increased in the United States. While in 2000, the incidence of infant mortality in the United States was lower than the OECD average, today it is higher."
  • akhatri_aus 10y ago
    You wont have healthcare cost problems in London though.. for starters.
    • UK-AL 10y ago
      But other professions are comparable.
      • walshemj 10y ago
        Cite ?
    • weberc2 10y ago
      What are these healthcare cost problems? U.S. software companies pay for employee health insurance while still maintaining higher salaries. Perhaps the healthcare system in England is marginally better than in the U.S., but I'm not aware of any health care crisis among U.S. software professionals.
      • akhatri_aus 10y ago
        On the health costs specifically: You basically get your health insurance for life & as understood at the moment portable to other EU countries, what happens when you lose your job or if your startup folds in the US or your insurance provider wont honour? I don't want to sound like some troll or something but theres tonnes of articles that go through the differences.
        • weberc2 10y ago
          > what happens when you lose your job or if your startup folds in the US or your insurance provider wont honour? In the U.S., your insurance isn't terminated upon loss of employment. I don't know of any physical ailments whose treatments an insurer can legally opt out of insuring. I believe in the possibility of the odd exception here or there, but nothing as endemic as you suggest. > I don't want to sound like some troll or something but theres tonnes of articles that go through the differences. I'm a software developer in the U.S., my friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances aren't dropping dead around me for want of health insurance. Your extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Mention of "tons of articles" isn't particularly persuasive.
  • pjc50 10y ago
    Is that doing the dollar conversion at pre- or post-Brexit prices? It's now 20% worse than it used to be. I'm not in London, but I'm seriously considering sniffing around for jobs which can be done with transatlantic remote working. Sadly that's a rare and oversubscribed option :(
    • V-2 10y ago
      Timezone issues are probably much of an impediment when it comes to remote employment (over the pond)
      • chris_7 10y ago
        Since the eastern US is only five hours behind London, you could have free time during the day and work mostly in the evening? Matinée prices, lunch specials, and most importantly sunlight abound! Right now I work for all of the good parts of the day and have free time during the bad parts.
      • willvarfar 10y ago
        (My data point is it's not a problem if your boss is hands off and your peers are hands on online)
      • vidarh 10y ago
        Depends how much of your social life is tied to the evening and how much they expect you to be reachable. I worked for a Bay Area startup for two years from London. It was tiring at times, but I got into a habit of working a bit in the morning, taking a long break early afternoon and then working again late evenings, and it worked quite well, so it's possible.
  • MarkMc 10y ago
    > Just look at salaries in London. Given the extraordinary cost of living, salaries are pitiful. That certainly wasn't the case when I was working in London about 10 years ago. The going rate for a Java contractor with banking experience was about £600 per day (then $1,100). Have things changed that much in 10 years?
    • walshemj 10y ago
      This is FTE salaried positions you need to reduce that by 66% to compare it to a contrcator
    • geodel 10y ago
      I am not living there but I think salaries for generic Java/.net/Webapps etc is going down mainly due to high supply of tech workers. In US our company offices are moving from major tech hub to smaller city. Initially most people decided to collect severance and find another job locally but now many are finding it difficult to find job with generic IT skills sets and reevaluating their initial decision.
    • BjoernKW 10y ago
      It's more like 500 quid these days. In addition to that, the recent plunge of the pound has made it increasingly unattractive to be paid in pounds at all.
    • cletus 10y ago
      I used to do contracting in the UK in large part because salaries were pitiful compared to contracting rates and when contracting you ended up paying way less tax so got to keep much more of your already higher income. But 600 pounds is now like $750. Assume 4 weeks vacation, public holidays, time between contracts and you should probably assume 200 paid days per year. That's 120k pounds/year or $150k/year. Not great. Not sure what contracting rates are like now. It's been awhile. When I was doing it (more than 10 years ago), banking contract was often north of 500/day. Thing is, those contracting in banking jobs can be hard to get. Typically you need experience in banking. If demand exceeds supply (as it did in the late 90s) then that's not a problem. When supply is relatively high (as it was in the early 2000s) then that's a huge barrier to entry. If you're locked out of that field your rates are typically much lower (at the time more like ~300-350 a day).
  • BjoernKW 10y ago
    Not sure what this is caused by but rates for freelance developers in London are lower than in many other parts of Europe with a significantly lower cost of living. So, London might just be an outlier. Not taking Silicon Valley into account (which is another outlier, albeit in the opposite direction) in my experience US and EU rates for development work generally are quite similar
  • mcv 10y ago
    London is particularly expensive because of the massive banking industry. They rake in the high salaries and drive up the prices for everybody. But it's true, programmer salaries in the US are higher than in the EU, and sometimes a lot higher. The point is: what are you going to do with all that money if you don't have the time to enjoy it? Even a cheap vacation can be more fun than slaving all year long and having only two weeks to do something with it.
• webaholic 10y ago
  How happy are they working that extra 25%? They are richer, sure. But I don't think being rich is an indicator of your overall state. Looking at [1], you can see that people in european countries come out on top of the happiness index. One could argue that working less is actually better for productivity and overall happiness. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/these-are-the-happiest-countries-in-the-world http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/these-are-...
  • mbillie1 10y ago
    It's almost like working 60+ hour weeks churning out CRUD apps to get a rich person richer isn't the secret path to happiness or something.
    • johndevor 10y ago
      Hold on, I need to write that one down...
      • oblio 10y ago
        In your CRUD ToDo app?
        • criddell 10y ago
          I feel like you're judging me and my app.
          • oblio 10y ago
            Of course I am, I'm European!
            • whamlastxmas 10y ago
              This is a CRUD app safe-space.
    • 10y ago
• gervase 10y ago
  Does anyone know of a similar comparison that includes South and East Asian countries? From my personal conversations, those areas will see longer hours AND lower pay than the U.S., and I'd be interested to see that broken down statistically.
• untog 10y ago
  I've worked in both Europe and the US, and in my opinion, US workers are far worse off for it. You earn more money in the US, you can advance faster, but you have next-to-no vacation time (and even when you do, you're still often expected to be reachable by e-mail), maternity/paternity leave is pitiful, and you have to pay large health insurance premiums, amongst other things. I know that isn't the case for everyone, but on average I'd advise someone to take Europe over the US, just for quality of life alone.
  • lintiness 10y ago
    some of us love work.
    • awjr 10y ago
      As long as you are working on your own stuff, that's usually fine.
    • mtberatwork 10y ago
      I'm sure many Europeans love their work too.
    • tirant 10y ago
      And you can still do that in Europe, no one is stopping you from working more. And even better, as you have more free time, you can use it for your own projects.
      • creshal 10y ago
        > And you can still do that in Europe, no one is stopping you from working more. Well, unions do. But that's a good thing, it prevents a race to burnout.
        • ajmurmann 10y ago
          Does that actually apply to every field? I've only worked briefly as a software developer in Germany and not full time, but I never got the impression that unions would realistically stop anyone in that field from working till midnight. If you are working as a factory worker for example that's of course a totally different story. However, I doubt that people in that kind of job regularly decide to put in a few extra hours on some days and are usually on the clock.
• snovv_crash 10y ago
  Is it just me, or is the article looking a bit too hard for reasons why US workers having longer working hours is a good thing?
• NietTim 10y ago
  An old infographic I had bookmarked which shows this pretty clearly: https://i.imgur.com/Vkd1I01.png https://i.imgur.com/Vkd1I01.png Also shows that working more != more pay (I'm Dutch, maybe you can see why I bookmarked it)
  • endisukaj 10y ago
    I find it ironic that Greece is the third hardest-working country in there. What with the whole stereotype of the lazy Greek.
• V-2 10y ago
  The number of hours doesn't tell the whole story though. Working cultures differ a great deal. You may put in longer hours, but then it's more laidback, with more socializing etc. whereas somewhere else it's clock-in, work, clock-out, no fooling about.
  • pessimizer 10y ago
    I'm not sure why you think that European workplaces are stricter than US workplaces, or that US jobs are generally laid back.
    • V-2 10y ago
      I didn't say I think that. If anything, I hinted at it as a possibility worth considering (not phrased as extremely as "US jobs are generally laid back"). It should be looked into if you want to put things in perspective. In Germany business culture is certainly one of more intense focus, at least in office jobs. Not that it's representative of the whole Europe, of course. Still, raw numbers don't say the whole story. That's why such findings should be taken with some distance.
      • pessimizer 10y ago
        I understand that different things are different, but you seem to be appealing to the law of averages.
• johnohara 10y ago
  ...according to the unpublished working paper (PDF) Why would Bloomberg release this as news?
• ajmurmann 10y ago
  I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva -The income range in the US is so large that there are lots of people at the bottom end who have to work multiple jobs. How much does that have to do with the longer work hours, Bloomberg? Generous pensions in Europe are also a strong factor in discouraging older people from working, the study said. In the U.S., more people over 65 are working than at any point in the past 50 years. The U.S.’s shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans makes it harder for Americans to know when it’s safe to retire. -This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. Edit: Formatting
  • walshemj 10y ago
    I had a boss (CTO) who worked in the USA (SV) and the UK he commented that he got about the same amount of work from both teams bear in mind that the UK team was ex civil service :-)
  • adwn 10y ago
    > I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
    • christophilus 10y ago
      Wow. That pretty much sums the problem up, right there. Talk about spin.
    • lazyant 10y ago
      That ad reminds me of an ad I saw in the US in 99 or so, it depicts a man waking up super early (kissing their children who are asleep) and leaving to work, it was for (used?) Mercedes I think, same idea, work super hard to drive a nice car, I thought it was the most depressing ad I ever saw.
    • 10y ago
• overcast 10y ago
  Less happy, certainly plausible. The only world superpower, definitely. While I don't have any evidence to back any of that up, it certainly appears the nation working the most, has the biggest economy/power. Obviously money/power isn't everything though.
  • 7Z7 10y ago
    >..it certainly appears the nation working the most, has the biggest economy/power Mexico? Interesting, I'd never have thought it. http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/chart-work-week-oecd/ http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/chart-work-week-oecd/
  • vertex-four 10y ago
    I'm not entirely certain that a nation as a whole being a superpower is good for the people if the people living in it are miserable. "The economy" is not, in fact, a direct measure of how happy people are - it's an indicator which may have something to do with it in a broad sense, but can be gamed, especially once you get down to attempting to maximise arbitrary single numbers (GDP, stock market indicators, etc).
    • overcast 10y ago
      I really don't think the US as a whole is "miserable". Anyone living in this country certainly can not complain about how they lucked out. Sure it has its problems, but we don't have to worry about wars on our soil, widespread famine, warlords, human rights violations, etc. Are there better quality of life countries? Debatable. But there is a reason people are still trying to get into the country to make a better life for themselves.
      • ionised 10y ago
        There are demonstrably happier countries, sure.
• jdc0589 10y ago
  Europeans have this shit figured out then. 25% less work means stopping at 3:00PM every day for me (unless you count the difference as block vacations). This would be LIFECHANGING. I get bored and stop concentrating around that time every day as is.
  • wmt 10y ago
    The workdays in Europe are your pretty typical 8 hour days, the difference I think comes from the 15-30 annual vacation days per year, plus all the public holidays.
    • room271 10y ago
      This. Before I switched to 4 days a week (to do non-work stuff) I had 31 days holiday not including public holidays. I really value this extra time. The lack of holidays was one reason (albeit not the only one) I decided not to work in San Francisco when I had the chance in the past.
• TulliusCicero 10y ago
  But do they adjust for median age? The US is probably younger than western Europe on average due to immigration/slightly higher birthrate, which means fewer retired people who don't work.
• spectrum1234 10y ago
  The article fails to mention culture which is obviously the #1 reason for differences in the first place.
• LVB 10y ago
  Europe? I would love to even get to the 26 hours/week that my fellow Americans are supposedly working according to the chart.
• cbsmith 10y ago
  Bizarre. The study apparently did not collect data from Canada. That would be a good way to compare against the comparatively fewer differences between Canada & the US.
• donretag 10y ago
  I would love to live and work in Italy (or any other Mediterranean climate country), but there are simply no [tech] jobs. And what few software jobs there are are not interesting at all and pay very little. I value my time and I am willing to take a pay cut to live in Europe, but the jobs are not simply there. Why can there be no middle ground? For now, the plan is to work hard and retire early. Real estate price chages in Europe can be considered flat compared to the US.
  • piva00 10y ago
    You can definitely find tech jobs in Portugal and Spain, mostly in Lisbon and Barcelona. They will not pay the same as in Germany, the Netherlands, UK or here in Sweden but you can live very comfortably with a tech salary there, so there's middle ground. Italy unfortunately doesn't really have a well developed tech industry as far as I know.
    • donretag 10y ago
      Never been to Portugal, I should look into it. I have been looking to go somewhere for NYE.
    • pmontra 10y ago
      Why not? Not many Earth shattering startups but being one of the largest EU economies means that Italy has many IT jobs. I spent the first half of my career in a 1000 people consulting company and a 3000 people mobile phone operator. Then I went freelancing, mostly web, and I pay my bills. There are many SME tech companies, selling their own products and services or consulting. There is quite a difference between the South and the North, two very different economies. If you ever want to try to work Italy go to the North. Probably Milan is the safest starting point. That said, I'm sure that the UK, Germany and France are better off than Italy, even the North of it.
  • sguav 10y ago
    FPGA designer (and embedded sys FW) living in Italy here, must say that tech jobs are possibly some of the few jobs that you can be safe to find here! Now, if tech means webdev I have friends that struggle to pay the bills by freelancing with that, but going down the stack you find much more demand (I have personally found A LOT of demand for EE). Consider that I'm speaking from the northern part of Italy, no idea about the south tech-jobs situation.
• jackcosgrove 10y ago
  Higher earning workers in the US work more hours than lower earning workers. "Between 1979 and 2002, the frequency of long work hours increased by 14.4 percentage points among the top quintile of wage earners, but fell by 6.7 percentage points in the lowest quintile." There are insinuations in this thread that the reason Americans work more hours is because the working poor have to work long hours to make ends meet. However, "There was no increase at all in work hours among high-school dropouts," from 1979 to 2002. Americans working long hours is increasingly a higher income phenomenon. Which means those workers have more disposable income they could trade for shorter hours if they chose to. http://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/w11895.html http://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/w11895.html
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    I work long hours because if I didn't there's a line of people outside the door who will.
    • jackcosgrove 10y ago
      European unemployment rates are higher than the US unemployment rate. Is there really a line of people waiting to take your job? If you are in software the employment market in the US is pretty tight right now.
    • IshKebab 10y ago
      That's why people invented unions and labour laws. Still amazes me that some states don't have to have a valid reason to fire you.
  • tastythrowaway2 10y ago
    there is a correlation but that does not mean the jobs are elastic. it is not reasonable to assume that higher paid workers can simply switch jobs or even career paths simply to trade available free time for lower compensation.
    • jackcosgrove 10y ago
• jnmandal 10y ago
  One crazy takeaway from this: Greeks work longer hours than Germans
  • heisenbit 10y ago
    Indeed. There are some odd numbers in these graphs which make me a bit skeptical of the conclusions.
    • romanovcode 10y ago
      The stereotype of lazy Greek is one of the most stupidest in EU.
  • lispm 10y ago
    Factory workers at Porsche are unionized. They work less than 40 hours per week, around 35 per week , still Porsche is one of the most profitable companies in the automotive business with a well-educated workforce. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-11/porsche-profit-rises-25-to-record-as-macan-suv-lifts-sales http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-11/porsche-pr...
• slavoingilizov 10y ago
  In the U.S., more people over 65 are working than at any point in the past 50 years Also, more people over 65 are alive, compared to any point in the past 50 years. Inability to draw insight from data is the 2nd biggest problem of media these days (the first is the linkbait/profit/ad broken business model)
  • matt4077 10y ago
    Yeah - they're talking percentages: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/-i-ll-never-retire-americans-break-record-for-working-past-65 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/-i-ll-neve... These complaints about the supposed incompetence and/or bias of today's journalism are really getting old, but thanks for highlighting how idiotic they sometimes are.
    • ZoF 10y ago
      The bias and incompetence is getting old as well.
• kilon 10y ago
  Well if as a country you seriously suck at wealth equality and defending basic human and worker rights that 25% seems pretty low. Stupidity after all loves hard work. Of all this is just old news for researchers https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
• ivanstame 10y ago
  I dont' find this to be a good thing, not something you should brag about...
• skywhopper 10y ago
  The data is ambiguous as presented. The chart footnote says "Overall hours per person, not just for people with jobs incorporating time at work along with retirement, vacation, unemployment, and other time spent out of the workforce." which does not tell me if it counts children and is still vague about whether it includes adults who have no intention or desire to find a job. The data given is in the article is far too sparse to draw any conclusions from. I hope the paper it's based on is more explicit and careful.
• kilon 10y ago
  USA problems are well known for decades now https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM A glowing example of how a huge economy can also be a terrible economy . That 25% is only the tip of the iceberg. If Russia is the fall of communism , USA is the fall of capitalism. Two extremely stupid economic and political models. Is it a coincidence that both countries have the most rich in the world and a terrible track record on wealth and income equality, workers and human rights ? Nope
  • AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > Is it a coincidence that both countries have the most rich in the world... It is not true that both countries have the most rich in the world[sic]. Russia was never a rich country like the US - not before Communism, not during, and not after. It could create a good facade and a strong military, but that's not the same thing...
    • ionised 10y ago
      I believe he meant rich individuals, billionaires, oligarchs.
      • AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        Ah, I see. I agree, that probably is what he meant.
• Koshkin 10y ago
  For a humorous yet insightful comparison between life in and outside the US I recommend watching Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next.
• sguav 10y ago
  I struggle to digest this article. Considering I'm an Italian who has ever worked 40+ hours a week (non tech jobs got me to 60+ hours/wk...). And then, when I lived in England, everyone seemed to be doing at most 35 hrs/wk. I understand that these are statistics, but I can't really match it to my experience (but, hey, maybe this tells me to complain less and enjoy spare time more!)
  • ythl 10y ago
    Italians have the opposite problem - too much spare time (at least, all at once). When I lived in Italy I was astonished that the entire country could effectively shut down for an entire month (ferragosto). I mean, come on, at least stagger your vacations so that everyone doesn't take leave all at the same time...
    • sguav 10y ago
      True, in my company we can't afford to shut in August considered that 90% of our clients are outside Italy. But generally speaking it goes that way. Possibly paid holidays lower the average then. (BTW: ferragosto is just one day - Aug 15th)
    • e12e 10y ago
      The same could probably be said for Norway too. I think it's a good thing, mind. Everyone gets 5 weeks off now, in general. usually 4 weeks in summer (the rest to be used for Easter, Christmas or at employees discretion in agreement with the employer), that matches up with the school holiday. I suppose there'd technically be room to shift those weeks a bit, but then how can you make sure everyone in a household have holidays together, assuming two working parents?
    • lagadu 10y ago
      That's true for pretty much most of Europe, in my experience; though as you move further north it's during July instead of August. The most common here in Denmark is the last three weeks of July. I really like working in July, the whole city is empty and nobody bothers me because they're on vacation :)
• matrix_escape 10y ago
  I think its a lot more than 25%. In Sweden where I work, people are relaxed at their jobs. Coming in at 8.30 am and leaving at 4.30 pm with a full lunch break in the middle is normal. Taking a couple of coffee breaks or ping pong matches and chatting with collegues is normal. There is casual talk all day long and bosses are also leaving work early to pick up children, spend time with the family and just enjoy their lives. I think something around 35 hours is what we do around here, but getting payed for 40 of course. The American culture honestly seems totally crazy to me. There is a massive difference in how you view yourselves over there. If you dont succeed at making some kind of a career, you feel like losers? Please step out of the matrix a little bit guys. Life is not getting some position in a company so you can work even more. Its about finding happiness.
  • thebspatrol 10y ago
    This is pretty standard in the US, especially if you don't work in some MegaCorp cog-in-the-machine type of situation. I think a good percentage of people working their asses off and working 60 hours a week are people who ARE actually successful. I don't blame them for turning work into a hobby.
    • embiggen 10y ago
      What? Where are these 8:30-4:30-with-a-nice-long-lunch jobs? In my experience, smaller (non bigcorp) companies have to fight to survive and don't have these luxuries..
      • thebspatrol 10y ago
        Is it really so unusual for someone with relatively marketable skills to have a standard 8 hour work day with a proper lunch break?
  • systemtest 10y ago
    Are you guys cool with starting at 10:00?
  • 10y ago
• alexk7 10y ago
  The article makes it seem like the US is where people work the most. It is not. The selection of countries make their graph misleading. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
• a_humean 10y ago
  This report is pretty pointless, and is at best a puff piece for an American audience. American workers are some of the most productive workers in the world, but working hours are not the sole reason. Working hours really do not tell you that much on their own. In Europe, Greece works the most hours, and yet they are hardly an economic success story. French people work fewer hours than British people, and yet France has better productivity measures. Italy works the fewest hours, but they are stuck in an economic mire. Industrial Era British factory workers worked many more hours than British factory workers today, and yet I'm certain that today's factory workers are much better value. There isn't a meaningful correlation to be found around working hours independent of other factors.
• yAnonymous 10y ago
  * 25% less efficient
• dsabanin 10y ago
  Rat race is real and it's speeding up.
• the_watcher 10y ago
  > U.S. workers not only put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. I understand that they're intending to compare us to other Western nations, but there's simply no way this is true globally.
• neves 10y ago
  Its time to start a world backslash to defend American workers. Like we do to ask for good working conditions in Asia. During the 17th century England started to fight against slavery. One of the reasons is that with the Industrial Revolution, the only way to compete with them were with slave labor. Maybe we should combat slavery in USA.
• l3m0ndr0p 10y ago
  US Workers work more hours because they are afraid to lose their jobs. US Workers take less vacation because they are afraid to lose their jobs US Workers don't want to lose their jobs because they will lose their health benefits, if they had them in the first place. The US doesn't have a good health care system, but it's better then nothing, even with the so called Obama Care. Funny, if you don't want health care (because it costs too much) you can get penalized by the IRS, via a fine for not paying for health insurance. Why kind of fucked up system do we have in the USA? US Workers when they lose their jobs do not have a good social safety net, like European countries have. I'm glad the Europeans work less than me. They've earned it and they demand it from their government. Me, as an American, if I don't like what I have here, I can just quit and look for a new job or become unemployed. Gee. Don't ever believe any American that says the USA is great. It isn't. If they do say it, they mus be rich & can afford it, may be in a Union, where it's hard to fire them, or maybe they are already retired. Peace
• erikbye 10y ago
  I’m from Norway. It has always been something of a given, from our perspective, that Americans work on average more hours per week than we do. It’s something you hear all the time. Also, that in the U.S. it’s more common to relocate for a job, and, accept longer commutes. I have a full-time position, and work a maximum of 37.5 hours every week.
• pcmaffey 10y ago
  It's called the American dream for a reason.
  • ionised 10y ago
    because it isn't real?
• tristor 10y ago
  As an American currently working remotely while traveling in Europe I have seen some of this first hand. I think there's pros and cons to the aspects I've observed. - Probably the most obvious is meals. In most European countries its not uncommon to take a 2-hour lunch break and to take 2-3 hours for dinner. But at the same time, the quality of food is higher, meals tend to be larger social affairs (not something you do alone), and slower more relaxed meals probably aid digestion. This contrasts sharply to the obsession with fast food/quick service meals in the US that are mostly taken alone and on the run. In some cases it was frustratingly difficult for me to find a restaurant with quick enough service that I wasn't feeling like I was letting my own team in the US down. - Transportation is less car-centric. What this means though is that a lot of people have a longer, if somewhat more relaxed commute. For instance, rather than a 15-20 minute drive if you live "near work", you might have a 10 minute walk + 40 minute train/metro ride. Sure, you /could/ be working on the metro in theory, or checking emails on your phone while walking. But people don't, and in a way that's great. It gives you a few moments of wakefulness where you don't have to focus and you don't have to think about work. - Holidays. I'm not really sure how this works out in small and broad technical teams like Operations. But it seems like given the amount of holiday time Europeans are granted and take that there's probably someone out on holidays on your team at any given moment. On the other hand, I imagine that there are less stress-related deaths in Europe. These are all just my first-hand observations, I haven't really dug into the stats around it, but I can imagine how these and other factors could easily lead to an overall reduction in work hours or even productivity vs American workers. On the other hand, I've found Europeans tend to be healthier and happier than Americans, so maybe it's not such a big deal?
• gozur88 10y ago
  >The U.S.’s shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans makes it harder for Americans to know when it’s safe to retire. That's not really true. Traditional pensions rely on the financial health of whoever is paying the pension. Personally, I'd rather rely on a 401(k) than find out in my dotage the company I was depending on to pay the bills went belly up. The real problem with retiring under 65 is health care. The situation is so muddled now it's impossible to predict what a health care plan or a serious illness is going to cost you five years hence.
• havetocharge 10y ago
  Reading the comments here, it is amazing to discover how many people dislike their work. When I was younger, I too had my share of jobs that I wasn't overly thrilled about, but with time I've found a great deal of fulfillment in what I do, and I truly hope the same for others.
• raarts 10y ago
  Americans live to work, Europeans work to live. 'Nuff said.
• rue 10y ago
  One interesting thing is that “25% more work” is taken at face value. In my experience, that 25% does not equate to 25% more productive in any non-assembly line job. Americans are busier, spend more time at work, and don’t get any more work done.
• contingencies 10y ago
  Bloomberg is terrible. If it's not a nearly baseless hatchet job on China, it's a nearly baseless hatchet job on Europe. Next up? Canada.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• didibus 10y ago
  Read a previous study on this same topic, and they hypothesized that it was due to cultural differences. In the US, socialization happens mostly through coworker interaction, and people's worth is assessed by the job you have and the money you make. Where as in Europe, socialization happens mostly out of work, in bars, coffee shops, etc. And people's worth is judged more from their hobbies, knowledge and social qualities. I thought that was a pretty good hypothesis. It even reflects in the political tendencies each place demonstrate. A lot of people in the US aspire to be CEOs or rich, most people in France for example aspire to have a good glass of wine on the coast of France playing bocce ball all day. To give some context, the other study I refer to found that Americans are happier when they work longer, while European were happier when they worked least.
• amai 10y ago
  Maybe relevant: "Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture" http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-b...