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Average annual hours worked per country

131 points by ShadowFaxSam 8y ago

betadreamer 8y ago
Keep in mind that this is showing the "reported" hours, which can be misleading. For example it shows that people in US works more than Japan but I know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more. However, since it is a cultural thing and they expect you to work long hours, no one reports overtime. I even heard that you can get fired if you report it.
- foobaw 8y ago
  Exactly what I wanted to say. I know it shows Korea as the 3rd most, but I feel like they should be higher on the list. Most don't report overtime and just do their work because it has become the convention and it wouldn't look good to their bosses.
  - e12e 8y ago
    Still, if this is total hours divided by workforce - at least in Japan I believe women are still more often stay at home, than in eg Norway? Not sure about South Korea.
    - e12e 8y ago
      From the description: > The concept used is the total number of hours worked over the year divided by the average number of people in employment. The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources. Part-time workers are covered as well as full-time workers. So if say, the average South Korean man works 2500 hours (full time, crazy hours) and the average woman works 1000 hours (pretty crazy part time job) - the average would still be below 2000 hours. I suppose one of the more interesting numbers would be total hours worked vs total work force (including unemployed) - it might be that eg Greece could maintain current productivity (or more likely increase, due to less strain pr worker) by going to a 6 hour work day and ~full employment.
  - shanghaiaway 8y ago
    Research like this exists because otherwise people would bring up what they "feel" the facts are.
- hectormalot 8y ago
  Also keep in mind that the numbers are not corrected for part-time vs full-time figures. e.g. my country (the Netherlands) is listed as 1439 hours vs Mexico 2257 hours annually per worker. You might come to the conclusion that people in Mexico work must longer than in the Netherlands. However, only 17% of people in Mexico work part-time, vs 37% in the Netherlands. Countries with low participation of part-time workers therefore will look as if they are working much longer hours.
  - moate 8y ago
    But why would you need to correct for that? If more of the labor force works part time, more of the labor force is working fewer hours. Are you assuming these part time workers are carrying multiple jobs which aren't being listed in sum (eg 20 Hours/week at Job A, 10 Hours/week at job B for 30 hours, instead of 15 if each job is separate?)
    - hectormalot 8y ago
      More likely that the part time force consists of families where both parents work eg 60-80%. This is at least quite common for friends around me. Perhaps ‘correcting’ is the wrong word. But the title feels like: this is a ranked list which countries work hardest. I think the figure fails to capture that a family where both parents work 30 hours is not working less than a family where only one parent works 50 hours. In my opinion, if that’s the comparison we want to make, it would be more fair to look at average hours worked per capita, or average hours worked per capita between ages 16-70, or something similar. That would capture both average hours and labor force participation.
    - ithkuil 8y ago
      To the other extreme: why would you correct for unemployment (which is what happens if you measure worked hours only for those who have a job)? After all an unemployed person is a "part-time" worker where the fraction of time spent working is exactly zero.
      - mercutio2 8y ago
- mental1896 8y ago
  Maybe I'm misreading the chart but it looks like it represents total hours. I don't know what the questionnaire looked like but, at least on the representation side, it appears that overtime is not considered.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  Another HNer put this together and I thought it was really interesting with regards to determining real expected working hours vs reported hours. (Using bikeshare ride data to determine peak hours and length of workday) http://olivernash.org/2011/02/02/dublin-bikes-revisited/index.html http://olivernash.org/2011/02/02/dublin-bikes-revisited/inde...
- microcolonel 8y ago
  There is a lot more part time work in Japan, and this skews elderly; not sure but that would seem like one way the data could be more accurate than you think.
- fffernan 8y ago
  You would also have to factor the amount of time spent socializing at work versus actually doing work. In Japan most of your friends are at work, and relationships are in work. Lots of coffee breaks, chatting about non work related matters,etc,etc. 8 hours spent at the office in US is much more work being done than 12 hours of busy Asian country. That being said there certainly was a good amount of people actually working themselves to death for 15hours day actually working while their bosses did not much work. Source: Worked at a Japanese company for almost a decade.
- tpeo 8y ago
  Reported by whom? What do those quotes mean?
- xevb3k 8y ago
  If you know it for a fact, could you supply some data that would help back this up? I’m not saying they don’t, but legally Japanese workers have more paid time off than Americans [1]. Japan also has a larger number of public holidays, which while not legally enforced, are generally taken. I’d be curious to see data about when people actually arrive at and leave work, and how many holidays are taken. [1] 10+ days versus 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave...
  - getoj 8y ago
    This question is also answered by the MHLW statistics [1]. On page 2, the line graph at the top represents the percentage of available paid leave days taken on average, with the absolute numbers below. So, the average worker in Heisei 25 (2013) had 18.5 days of leave, of which he took 9.0, or 48.8%. (Not including public holidays.) [1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukijunkyoku-Soumuka/0000069063.pdf https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukiju... (in Japanese)
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more. No, you dont know it for a fact, and you should also add that Japanese working in large corporations just STAY late because they have to, not because they are actively working. So "working hours" is not always about work if you consider the time they are physically at work.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > Japanese working in large corporations just STAY late because they have to, not because they are actively working. I think that's a distinction without relevance, depending on what you are trying to infer from the data. Plenty of people spend a portion of their paid workday not doing work either, along a wide spectrum. Some people do no active work besides fill a seat, others take no breaks beyond what is required and stay on task the entire time (sometimes there is no option to do otherwise by the nature of the work). If you're at work, you aren't able to do certain other activities you might like to do (for example, it prevents spending time with your children, even if you are allowed to recline and watch a movie while at your desk). We can measure hours working, we can measure productivity, or we can combine them, but it's probably not useful for us to start conflating them.
- gerdesj 8y ago
  but I know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more Your evidence ...
- hrktb 8y ago
  > people in Japan work A LOT more No they don’t. Not your average part-time worker at the supermarket registry, nor your mostly stay at home mother doing 4h a day at the convinience store. This study is not just about high profile workers, it’s for the global working population, “blue collar” and part timers included.
  - JimmyAustin 8y ago
    As with most surveys, the average isn't very insightful, and you need to dive further in to the distribution to learn anything. I imagine Japan has a bimodal distribution split between on and off the salarymen track.
- shanghaiaway 8y ago
  > I know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more Source? None? Ok, let's use the on linked here that contradicts you.
- getoj 8y ago
  A couple of people have made the point about full-time versus part-time work in Japan, which is actually covered by this [1] MHLW report on overwork. The graph on the right on Page 1 has an orange line at the top representing the total hours worked per year by an average "ordinary" (meaning full-time) worker. The red line below that represents the average part-time worker. The dates are from Heisei 6 (1994) through 25 (2013). So we can see that as of 2013, the average full-time worker in Japan reported that they worked 2018 hours a year. I'd be interested in seeing comparable statistics for the US and other countries. [1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukijunkyoku-Soumuka/0000069063.pdf https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukiju... (in Japanese) EDIT TO ADD: It's also worth noting that the increasing blue bars in the right-hand graph represent an increase in the percentage of people in part-time work, which corresponds to a decrease in overall (full- and part-time) work hours in the graph on the left (the blue line). So the arguments about a higher percentage of part-time workers being significant in lowering the average seem to be right.
- patio11 8y ago
  I have a joke about this which is reasonably descriptive of the mechanism: Japan has a 45 hour work week. Men work 80; women work 10. (If you prefer the non-joking version you can Google for social science research in Japanese or English; eyeballing the graph here should quickly confirm the impression "Oh yes most women who are employed are not full-time equivalents for either the standard or Japanese understanding of that phrase." https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF_2_1_Usual_working_hours_gender.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF_2_1_Usual_working_hours_... ) It is, FWIW, not the case that no one reports overtime. (It is also not the case that everyone reports the correct hours worked. The practice at my previous employer was "We know that you're all diligent and work overtime, and we compensate you for it, of course. The company average is 30 hours of overtime per month. You will, naturally, manage your schedule sufficiently to get your work done in a reasonable fashion, and not violate the Labor Standards Act by working more than X hours per month." And, if you were to check my time cards, you would have seen that I was very diligent about following instructions, in the matter befitting a salaryman at a proper Japanese company.)
WhompingWindows 8y ago
Unsurprisingly, USA near the top with 1780 hrs worked annually by the average worker, contrast that with the most hours mexico (2257 hrs) and with the least hours Germany (1356) or the Scandanavians like Denmark and Norway (both around ~1400 hours). This is a poor look for the corporate-centric politics of the USA, which has extremely rich citizens and corporations yet which forces very long hours onto its laborers. One might expect that from a Mexico or Costa Rica due to their differences in riches and demographics. Yet another example of the surprisingly poor living quality in the USA in aggregate terms relative to GDP. The USA is great if you're rich and is mediocre if you're everyone else.
- ShabbosGoy 8y ago
  > Yet another example of the surprisingly poor living quality in the USA in aggregate terms relative to GDP. The USA is great if you're rich and is mediocre if you're everyone else. Sad when you think about it. The US used to be a place where you could rise to the top based on ability alone. Now it has become corrupted and the very antithesis of the American Dream.
- ewestern 8y ago
  >> Unsurprisingly, USA near the top with 1780 hrs worked annually by the average worker According to the chart, US workers work < 1% more than the average for OECD countries. There are only two countries that are closer to the average. "Near the top" is not even a close description of this data. Given that your premise is false, how do the rest of your claims follow?
  - ainiriand 8y ago
    That only shows that you should not give averages, but means. What we can extrapolate from this is that there is some very big factor pushing this up as it occurs with average household income.
    - halflings 8y ago
      > That only shows that you should not give averages, but means. Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but an average can be a mean, median, or some other summary statistic. Did you mean (wink) median* instead?
mxuribe 8y ago
Knowing a few colleagues who work in some of the listed countries, I'd say this chart is about right. /* As he groans slightly from his years working hard in the U.S., and settling back in his comfortable armchair quarterback chair. */
- greenbean1234 8y ago
  Just sit back in your armchair and take some well deserved rest
hmexx 8y ago
Funny.. in Europe, Germans are considered hard-working and Greeks typically "lazy". According to these stats, the truth is completely the opposite!
- aserafini 8y ago
  I live and work in Germany but I am not German. I believe the work culture here is: if you are having to work outside core hours, you are ineffective and should have managed your workload better. Consequently I believe there is greater focus on continuously doing the most important task during work rather than occupying oneself with 'busy work' that is prevalent in many other work cultures.
  - kuerbel 8y ago
    I live in Germany as well (I'm Swiss), and people usually get free time in exchange for overtime and not money around here. I think that explains it better, because overtime is pretty prevalent - at least in some jobs. Others not so much. You usually don't have to work more than your usual 8 hours/day in a super market. As a software engineer however...
    - RobertoG 8y ago
      I don't know why is necessary to explain anything. Maybe the explanation is that the Germans work less hours. It would be logic, a richer country, a better life. Is that shameful or something?
      - kjeetgill 8y ago
        I think the desire to explain something comes from the data not lining up with expectations. You either want to explain why the data lacks details and reality DOES line up with intuition OR why the intuition was wrong or prejudicial. I get it, stereotypes can suck and make bad null hypotheses but thats how these things go.
        8y ago
tomatotomato37 8y ago
There's only 38 countries on here, a large majority of which would be considered "Western." The only thing this is really useful for having first worlders lust after other first world countries with single digit percent differences in work hours Also don't forget a standard 40 work week over a year is 2080 hours, significantly higher than the average.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Most countries have at least 4 weeks holiday, so that would be 1920 hours. In the UK the standard week varies between 35 and 40 hours (9-5 with hour lunch, 9-5.30 with hour lunch, 9-5:30 with half hour lunch), and the 4 weeks is in addition to the 9ish bank holidays, so that's about 1700 hours, and sure enough 1681 is the magic number. Greece surprised me. They have 20% unemployment, meaning that if they spread the work evenly, rather than having 80 people working 2010 hours, they could have 95 working 1692 hours, same as Canada and Spain. The work is there in Greece, so why isn't it being shared more equally?
  - kpil 8y ago
    Maybe a lot of agriculture and small business?
- whorleater 8y ago
  >There's only 38 countries on here It's from the OCED, which is literally a club of rich (mostly) first world countries.
- simongray 8y ago
  > Also don't forget a standard 40 work week over a year is 2080 hours, significantly higher than the average. Standard in the US, not standard everywhere.
  - drcoopster 8y ago
    Don't forget there are typically 8-10 paid holidays (New Year, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas) for full-time salaried employees in the US, plus whatever paid vacation they choose to use. Usually 2000 hours is a good number for 40 hrs/wk full time employment (without PTO).
ashray5 8y ago
The good news: number of working hours decreased from 2000 to 2017 for pretty much all the countries in this report. A sign of overall development in my opinion.
- kevingadd 8y ago
  Or job market regression. Combined with wage stagnation in the US over the past few decades, a decrease in working hours (depending on where the hours are dropping) would have to map to an increase in poverty and/or homelessness unless paired with a decrease in cost of living (which isn't happening here)
  - adventured 8y ago
    There has not been compensation stagnation in the US. When you include everything, total compensation has continued to climb. Health benefits are expensive, have ballooned massively in cost, and are disregarded in the fake wage stagnation premise that gets thrown around. The US has gone from 6% of GDP going to healthcare, to around 18-20%. That's where a lot of compensation growth has gone, paying that rising bill. It doesn't mean that compensation does not exist however, it's being spent on a service (that obviously should cost a lot less). 401k and similar compensation is disregarded by the wage stagnation premise. The dramatic improvement in the US welfare state in the last 20 years is entirely disregarded. That costs a lot of money, heavily paid for by the top 1/3 who pay most of the taxes in the very progressive US taxation system. The share of US GDP going to the welfare state is now higher than other comparable countries like Canada and Australia, and it's climbing faster than both (ie accelerating away from them). That's an entirely disregarded factor in the quality of life for the bottom 1/3 who may find themselves needing to lean on the welfare state at some point, and or routinely draw benefits from it (that are not added into the income picture). When you look at the wage growth figures over the last 20 years, they do not show the large increase in welfare benefits being consumed. The point being, the picture is not nearly so dire as is often claimed.
    - kevingadd 8y ago
      Increased health care costs doesn't mean that compensation has gone up, many workers don't have health coverage provided by their employer. For people without employer-provided health care there are huge gaps in government-provided health care (often gaps created on purpose). Combine that with the minimum wage literally being unchanged in many states for decades... Not to mention employer plans' deductibles, coverage and copays can change as costs go up.
Havoc 8y ago
I guess "he works like a mexican is no longer racist", just factual
antisthenes 8y ago
Doesn't annual hours worked suffer from "measure as a target" issue among other things? There frequently are incentives to misreport it based on company culture or perception among coworkers. Nor does it actually correspond to 'productive' hours. I can tell you for a fact that while my coworker is physically present for about 40 hours a week, they realistically perform job duties for maybe about 15-20 hours out of that, and that's being generous.
acd 8y ago
Working less hours is better. Then you can spend more time with people that matter family and friends. There is no point in working much just for the sake of it. Also working hours vs gdp should show that you can work less hours and still have a high gdp.
- spraak 8y ago
  Yes. Productivity (y axis) over hours worked (x axis) is logarithmic in my mind, at least for SWE: I don't see much difference in working 8 vs 12 hours in a day
- Mirioron 8y ago
  If you look at the list you'll find that many countries near the top are countries that aren't the richest yet, but are making enormous gains economically. It's likely that the richer countries already went through such a phase in the past.
- gascan 8y ago
  Nah I think what you'd really want to look at is something like YOY GDP growth vs hours worked, or something like that. If a country is experiencing large gains in output, working more hours is paying great dividends and raising everyone's standard of living, etc. You're not working just for the sake of working. On the other hand if output is stable, that's a time to start spending more time with family.
  - shanghaiaway 8y ago
    Increase working hours in the US by 10% across the board and the GDP will likely not increase at all.
stockkid 8y ago
interesting that there is a decreasing trend in almost all countries in the table. I wonder how much of the trend can be attributed to automation and if it will only accelerate.
gweinberg 8y ago
It absolutely is NOT. it explicitly states these numbers are only useful for comparing hours worked by year in a given country, not for comparing between countries. "The concept used is the total number of hours worked over the year divided by the average number of people in employment. The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources."
nickthemagicman 8y ago
U.S.A. 1780 / 52 = 34.23 Are there people that only work 34ish hours a week? I'm working way more than that.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  1) You are not factoring any holidays by dividing by 52 2) People also work part time
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    Ah thanks. But still seems like a smaller number than I was expecting.

131 points by ShadowFaxSam 8y ago

Keep in mind that this is showing the "reported" hours, which can be misleading. For example it shows that people in US works more than Japan but I know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more. However, since it is a cultural thing and they expect you to work long hours, no one reports overtime. I even heard that you can get fired if you report it.

foobaw 8y ago
Exactly what I wanted to say. I know it shows Korea as the 3rd most, but I feel like they should be higher on the list. Most don't report overtime and just do their work because it has become the convention and it wouldn't look good to their bosses.
- e12e 8y ago
  Still, if this is total hours divided by workforce - at least in Japan I believe women are still more often stay at home, than in eg Norway? Not sure about South Korea.
  - e12e 8y ago
    From the description: > The concept used is the total number of hours worked over the year divided by the average number of people in employment. The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources. Part-time workers are covered as well as full-time workers. So if say, the average South Korean man works 2500 hours (full time, crazy hours) and the average woman works 1000 hours (pretty crazy part time job) - the average would still be below 2000 hours. I suppose one of the more interesting numbers would be total hours worked vs total work force (including unemployed) - it might be that eg Greece could maintain current productivity (or more likely increase, due to less strain pr worker) by going to a 6 hour work day and ~full employment.
- shanghaiaway 8y ago
  Research like this exists because otherwise people would bring up what they "feel" the facts are.
hectormalot 8y ago
Also keep in mind that the numbers are not corrected for part-time vs full-time figures. e.g. my country (the Netherlands) is listed as 1439 hours vs Mexico 2257 hours annually per worker. You might come to the conclusion that people in Mexico work must longer than in the Netherlands. However, only 17% of people in Mexico work part-time, vs 37% in the Netherlands. Countries with low participation of part-time workers therefore will look as if they are working much longer hours.
- moate 8y ago
  But why would you need to correct for that? If more of the labor force works part time, more of the labor force is working fewer hours. Are you assuming these part time workers are carrying multiple jobs which aren't being listed in sum (eg 20 Hours/week at Job A, 10 Hours/week at job B for 30 hours, instead of 15 if each job is separate?)
  - hectormalot 8y ago
    More likely that the part time force consists of families where both parents work eg 60-80%. This is at least quite common for friends around me. Perhaps ‘correcting’ is the wrong word. But the title feels like: this is a ranked list which countries work hardest. I think the figure fails to capture that a family where both parents work 30 hours is not working less than a family where only one parent works 50 hours. In my opinion, if that’s the comparison we want to make, it would be more fair to look at average hours worked per capita, or average hours worked per capita between ages 16-70, or something similar. That would capture both average hours and labor force participation.
  - ithkuil 8y ago
    To the other extreme: why would you correct for unemployment (which is what happens if you measure worked hours only for those who have a job)? After all an unemployed person is a "part-time" worker where the fraction of time spent working is exactly zero.
    - mercutio2 8y ago
mental1896 8y ago
Maybe I'm misreading the chart but it looks like it represents total hours. I don't know what the questionnaire looked like but, at least on the representation side, it appears that overtime is not considered.
CalRobert 8y ago
Another HNer put this together and I thought it was really interesting with regards to determining real expected working hours vs reported hours. (Using bikeshare ride data to determine peak hours and length of workday) http://olivernash.org/2011/02/02/dublin-bikes-revisited/index.html http://olivernash.org/2011/02/02/dublin-bikes-revisited/inde...
microcolonel 8y ago
There is a lot more part time work in Japan, and this skews elderly; not sure but that would seem like one way the data could be more accurate than you think.
fffernan 8y ago
You would also have to factor the amount of time spent socializing at work versus actually doing work. In Japan most of your friends are at work, and relationships are in work. Lots of coffee breaks, chatting about non work related matters,etc,etc. 8 hours spent at the office in US is much more work being done than 12 hours of busy Asian country. That being said there certainly was a good amount of people actually working themselves to death for 15hours day actually working while their bosses did not much work. Source: Worked at a Japanese company for almost a decade.
tpeo 8y ago
Reported by whom? What do those quotes mean?
xevb3k 8y ago
If you know it for a fact, could you supply some data that would help back this up? I’m not saying they don’t, but legally Japanese workers have more paid time off than Americans [1]. Japan also has a larger number of public holidays, which while not legally enforced, are generally taken. I’d be curious to see data about when people actually arrive at and leave work, and how many holidays are taken. [1] 10+ days versus 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave...
- getoj 8y ago
  This question is also answered by the MHLW statistics [1]. On page 2, the line graph at the top represents the percentage of available paid leave days taken on average, with the absolute numbers below. So, the average worker in Heisei 25 (2013) had 18.5 days of leave, of which he took 9.0, or 48.8%. (Not including public holidays.) [1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukijunkyoku-Soumuka/0000069063.pdf https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukiju... (in Japanese)
ekianjo 8y ago
> know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more. No, you dont know it for a fact, and you should also add that Japanese working in large corporations just STAY late because they have to, not because they are actively working. So "working hours" is not always about work if you consider the time they are physically at work.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > Japanese working in large corporations just STAY late because they have to, not because they are actively working. I think that's a distinction without relevance, depending on what you are trying to infer from the data. Plenty of people spend a portion of their paid workday not doing work either, along a wide spectrum. Some people do no active work besides fill a seat, others take no breaks beyond what is required and stay on task the entire time (sometimes there is no option to do otherwise by the nature of the work). If you're at work, you aren't able to do certain other activities you might like to do (for example, it prevents spending time with your children, even if you are allowed to recline and watch a movie while at your desk). We can measure hours working, we can measure productivity, or we can combine them, but it's probably not useful for us to start conflating them.
gerdesj 8y ago
but I know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more Your evidence ...
hrktb 8y ago
> people in Japan work A LOT more No they don’t. Not your average part-time worker at the supermarket registry, nor your mostly stay at home mother doing 4h a day at the convinience store. This study is not just about high profile workers, it’s for the global working population, “blue collar” and part timers included.
- JimmyAustin 8y ago
  As with most surveys, the average isn't very insightful, and you need to dive further in to the distribution to learn anything. I imagine Japan has a bimodal distribution split between on and off the salarymen track.
shanghaiaway 8y ago
> I know for a fact that people in Japan works A LOT more Source? None? Ok, let's use the on linked here that contradicts you.
getoj 8y ago
A couple of people have made the point about full-time versus part-time work in Japan, which is actually covered by this [1] MHLW report on overwork. The graph on the right on Page 1 has an orange line at the top representing the total hours worked per year by an average "ordinary" (meaning full-time) worker. The red line below that represents the average part-time worker. The dates are from Heisei 6 (1994) through 25 (2013). So we can see that as of 2013, the average full-time worker in Japan reported that they worked 2018 hours a year. I'd be interested in seeing comparable statistics for the US and other countries. [1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukijunkyoku-Soumuka/0000069063.pdf https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-11201000-Roudoukiju... (in Japanese) EDIT TO ADD: It's also worth noting that the increasing blue bars in the right-hand graph represent an increase in the percentage of people in part-time work, which corresponds to a decrease in overall (full- and part-time) work hours in the graph on the left (the blue line). So the arguments about a higher percentage of part-time workers being significant in lowering the average seem to be right.
patio11 8y ago
I have a joke about this which is reasonably descriptive of the mechanism: Japan has a 45 hour work week. Men work 80; women work 10. (If you prefer the non-joking version you can Google for social science research in Japanese or English; eyeballing the graph here should quickly confirm the impression "Oh yes most women who are employed are not full-time equivalents for either the standard or Japanese understanding of that phrase." https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF_2_1_Usual_working_hours_gender.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF_2_1_Usual_working_hours_... ) It is, FWIW, not the case that no one reports overtime. (It is also not the case that everyone reports the correct hours worked. The practice at my previous employer was "We know that you're all diligent and work overtime, and we compensate you for it, of course. The company average is 30 hours of overtime per month. You will, naturally, manage your schedule sufficiently to get your work done in a reasonable fashion, and not violate the Labor Standards Act by working more than X hours per month." And, if you were to check my time cards, you would have seen that I was very diligent about following instructions, in the matter befitting a salaryman at a proper Japanese company.)

WhompingWindows 8y ago

Unsurprisingly, USA near the top with 1780 hrs worked annually by the average worker, contrast that with the most hours mexico (2257 hrs) and with the least hours Germany (1356) or the Scandanavians like Denmark and Norway (both around ~1400 hours). This is a poor look for the corporate-centric politics of the USA, which has extremely rich citizens and corporations yet which forces very long hours onto its laborers. One might expect that from a Mexico or Costa Rica due to their differences in riches and demographics. Yet another example of the surprisingly poor living quality in the USA in aggregate terms relative to GDP. The USA is great if you're rich and is mediocre if you're everyone else.

ShabbosGoy 8y ago
> Yet another example of the surprisingly poor living quality in the USA in aggregate terms relative to GDP. The USA is great if you're rich and is mediocre if you're everyone else. Sad when you think about it. The US used to be a place where you could rise to the top based on ability alone. Now it has become corrupted and the very antithesis of the American Dream.
ewestern 8y ago
>> Unsurprisingly, USA near the top with 1780 hrs worked annually by the average worker According to the chart, US workers work < 1% more than the average for OECD countries. There are only two countries that are closer to the average. "Near the top" is not even a close description of this data. Given that your premise is false, how do the rest of your claims follow?
- ainiriand 8y ago
  That only shows that you should not give averages, but means. What we can extrapolate from this is that there is some very big factor pushing this up as it occurs with average household income.
  - halflings 8y ago
    > That only shows that you should not give averages, but means. Sorry if this sounds pedantic, but an average can be a mean, median, or some other summary statistic. Did you mean (wink) median* instead?

mxuribe 8y ago

Knowing a few colleagues who work in some of the listed countries, I'd say this chart is about right. /* As he groans slightly from his years working hard in the U.S., and settling back in his comfortable armchair quarterback chair. */

greenbean1234 8y ago
Just sit back in your armchair and take some well deserved rest

hmexx 8y ago

Funny.. in Europe, Germans are considered hard-working and Greeks typically "lazy". According to these stats, the truth is completely the opposite!

aserafini 8y ago
I live and work in Germany but I am not German. I believe the work culture here is: if you are having to work outside core hours, you are ineffective and should have managed your workload better. Consequently I believe there is greater focus on continuously doing the most important task during work rather than occupying oneself with 'busy work' that is prevalent in many other work cultures.
- kuerbel 8y ago
  I live in Germany as well (I'm Swiss), and people usually get free time in exchange for overtime and not money around here. I think that explains it better, because overtime is pretty prevalent - at least in some jobs. Others not so much. You usually don't have to work more than your usual 8 hours/day in a super market. As a software engineer however...
  - RobertoG 8y ago
    I don't know why is necessary to explain anything. Maybe the explanation is that the Germans work less hours. It would be logic, a richer country, a better life. Is that shameful or something?
    - kjeetgill 8y ago
      I think the desire to explain something comes from the data not lining up with expectations. You either want to explain why the data lacks details and reality DOES line up with intuition OR why the intuition was wrong or prejudicial. I get it, stereotypes can suck and make bad null hypotheses but thats how these things go.
      - 8y ago

tomatotomato37 8y ago

There's only 38 countries on here, a large majority of which would be considered "Western." The only thing this is really useful for having first worlders lust after other first world countries with single digit percent differences in work hours Also don't forget a standard 40 work week over a year is 2080 hours, significantly higher than the average.

isostatic 8y ago
Most countries have at least 4 weeks holiday, so that would be 1920 hours. In the UK the standard week varies between 35 and 40 hours (9-5 with hour lunch, 9-5.30 with hour lunch, 9-5:30 with half hour lunch), and the 4 weeks is in addition to the 9ish bank holidays, so that's about 1700 hours, and sure enough 1681 is the magic number. Greece surprised me. They have 20% unemployment, meaning that if they spread the work evenly, rather than having 80 people working 2010 hours, they could have 95 working 1692 hours, same as Canada and Spain. The work is there in Greece, so why isn't it being shared more equally?
- kpil 8y ago
  Maybe a lot of agriculture and small business?
whorleater 8y ago
>There's only 38 countries on here It's from the OCED, which is literally a club of rich (mostly) first world countries.
simongray 8y ago
> Also don't forget a standard 40 work week over a year is 2080 hours, significantly higher than the average. Standard in the US, not standard everywhere.
- drcoopster 8y ago
  Don't forget there are typically 8-10 paid holidays (New Year, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas) for full-time salaried employees in the US, plus whatever paid vacation they choose to use. Usually 2000 hours is a good number for 40 hrs/wk full time employment (without PTO).

ashray5 8y ago

The good news: number of working hours decreased from 2000 to 2017 for pretty much all the countries in this report. A sign of overall development in my opinion.

kevingadd 8y ago
Or job market regression. Combined with wage stagnation in the US over the past few decades, a decrease in working hours (depending on where the hours are dropping) would have to map to an increase in poverty and/or homelessness unless paired with a decrease in cost of living (which isn't happening here)
- adventured 8y ago
  There has not been compensation stagnation in the US. When you include everything, total compensation has continued to climb. Health benefits are expensive, have ballooned massively in cost, and are disregarded in the fake wage stagnation premise that gets thrown around. The US has gone from 6% of GDP going to healthcare, to around 18-20%. That's where a lot of compensation growth has gone, paying that rising bill. It doesn't mean that compensation does not exist however, it's being spent on a service (that obviously should cost a lot less). 401k and similar compensation is disregarded by the wage stagnation premise. The dramatic improvement in the US welfare state in the last 20 years is entirely disregarded. That costs a lot of money, heavily paid for by the top 1/3 who pay most of the taxes in the very progressive US taxation system. The share of US GDP going to the welfare state is now higher than other comparable countries like Canada and Australia, and it's climbing faster than both (ie accelerating away from them). That's an entirely disregarded factor in the quality of life for the bottom 1/3 who may find themselves needing to lean on the welfare state at some point, and or routinely draw benefits from it (that are not added into the income picture). When you look at the wage growth figures over the last 20 years, they do not show the large increase in welfare benefits being consumed. The point being, the picture is not nearly so dire as is often claimed.
  - kevingadd 8y ago
    Increased health care costs doesn't mean that compensation has gone up, many workers don't have health coverage provided by their employer. For people without employer-provided health care there are huge gaps in government-provided health care (often gaps created on purpose). Combine that with the minimum wage literally being unchanged in many states for decades... Not to mention employer plans' deductibles, coverage and copays can change as costs go up.

Havoc 8y ago

I guess "he works like a mexican is no longer racist", just factual

antisthenes 8y ago

Doesn't annual hours worked suffer from "measure as a target" issue among other things? There frequently are incentives to misreport it based on company culture or perception among coworkers. Nor does it actually correspond to 'productive' hours. I can tell you for a fact that while my coworker is physically present for about 40 hours a week, they realistically perform job duties for maybe about 15-20 hours out of that, and that's being generous.

acd 8y ago

Working less hours is better. Then you can spend more time with people that matter family and friends. There is no point in working much just for the sake of it. Also working hours vs gdp should show that you can work less hours and still have a high gdp.

spraak 8y ago
Yes. Productivity (y axis) over hours worked (x axis) is logarithmic in my mind, at least for SWE: I don't see much difference in working 8 vs 12 hours in a day
Mirioron 8y ago
If you look at the list you'll find that many countries near the top are countries that aren't the richest yet, but are making enormous gains economically. It's likely that the richer countries already went through such a phase in the past.
gascan 8y ago
Nah I think what you'd really want to look at is something like YOY GDP growth vs hours worked, or something like that. If a country is experiencing large gains in output, working more hours is paying great dividends and raising everyone's standard of living, etc. You're not working just for the sake of working. On the other hand if output is stable, that's a time to start spending more time with family.
- shanghaiaway 8y ago
  Increase working hours in the US by 10% across the board and the GDP will likely not increase at all.

stockkid 8y ago

interesting that there is a decreasing trend in almost all countries in the table. I wonder how much of the trend can be attributed to automation and if it will only accelerate.

gweinberg 8y ago

It absolutely is NOT. it explicitly states these numbers are only useful for comparing hours worked by year in a given country, not for comparing between countries. "The concept used is the total number of hours worked over the year divided by the average number of people in employment. The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources."

nickthemagicman 8y ago

U.S.A. 1780 / 52 = 34.23 Are there people that only work 34ish hours a week? I'm working way more than that.

ramblerman 8y ago
1) You are not factoring any holidays by dividing by 52 2) People also work part time
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  Ah thanks. But still seems like a smaller number than I was expecting.