8 ms·

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 f

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.)

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.)