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Smallest country in Europe has the highest percentage of employees working form home

by jelly1 7y ago

eesmith 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... lists a number of European countries which are smaller than the Netherlands, including Belgium and Albania.
- jdhdbebdxu 7y ago
  What does this actually add? They were clearly jabbing at the fact it's easy to have good ratios when your country is tiny. Whether or not their example is actually the tiniest is only semi-relevant with respect to the point being made. This is like when European nations talk about the high publication rates of their academics, good ratios are easy when your country's slice of the pie is miniscule.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on why population size skews working from home distributions? It isn't obvious to me.
    - ageitgey 7y ago
      It's effectively cherry-picking data. If you want to encourage something as public policy (like working from home, recycling, public transit, etc), it's a lot easier to deploy a new program at a 'city level' where everyone more or less lives and travels in similar way than than at a US Federal level where you are dealing with over 300 million people who live in all kinds of geography and all kinds of different situations. The US covers everything from highly urban areas to vast, unpopulated deserts and mountains. The Netherlands is about the size (population wise) of a large city like Shanghai and it's fairly consistent in geography and urbanization throughout the entire country. That's just much easier situation to influence than a vast country like the US. It's a much simpler problem. It would be more fair to compare the US with all of Europe, including Spain, Greece, Croatia, etc. What percent of people are working from home in Croatia? And how does that compare to a Netherlands-sized cherry picked area in the US, like the New York City metro area? See how that's an unfair comparison? According to the article, the US vs. the entire EU rates are not too far off.
      - seszett 7y ago
        > It would be more fair to compare the US with all of Europe, including Spain, Greece, Croatia, etc. What percent of people are working from home in Croatia? These are all shown on the map. Only a handful small Eastern European countries (plus Greece) have lower rates than the US. Spain has 4.3% people working from home. Countries both with lower and higher population density than the US have higher numbers. > According to the article, the US vs. the entire EU rates are not too far off. EU is 5.2% and the US 2.8%, that's about half of the EU.
      - Aaargh20318 7y ago
        > it's a lot easier to deploy a new program at a 'city level' where everyone more or less lives and travels in similar way than than at a US Federal level where you are dealing with over 300 million people who live in all kinds of geography and all kinds of different situations. Why ? You can just treat the US a a collection of smaller communities and implement it independently in each of those. All you need to do at the federal level is to instruct the local level to tackle the issue.
    - Mattasher 7y ago
      Small sample sizes are much more likely to produce extreme results, because it's easier to get an extreme result by chance. In the US, the highest rates of cancer occur in the most rural counties. So do the lowest rates of cancer. Think about it like grabbing from a giant bag of M&M's. The fewer you select, the higher the chances your results will be skewed towards one color.
      - PeterStuer 7y ago
        But we are not sub-sampling here. We are comparing the whole of the Netherlands with the whole of the US right? We might take a big bag of M&M's and a smaller bag of M&M's, and count both of their contents, and find that the small bag has proportionally significantly more blue M&M's than the bigger bag.
  - majos 7y ago
    1. it’s good to flag clearly false statements 2. it’s not a “fact it’s easy to have good ratios when your country is tiny”?
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Jelly1's comment adds even less. If your observation about correlations is true, can we assume that Belgium and Albania have even higher ratios of employees that work from home? Belgium = 6.6%. Given that Belgium and the Netherlands are neighbors, with a majority Flemish population, this means simple size isn't the primary factor. (Albania isn't even listed.) Switzerland is only slightly larger than the European part of the Netherlands, and yet it has a rate of 4.1%. Population density might be a factor, but simple density isn't enough, as Finland's rate is 13.3% while the US has a density about twice that of Finland. Since size isn't a clear factor, and density isn't a clear factor, I could not makes sense of Jelly1's comment. It did not come across as an informed jab but a factually incorrect statement, which I tried to highlight, without a verbose analysis like this one.
RayMan1 7y ago
Finland is 8-th biggest country in Europe (Russia included) and it follows the Netherlands with 13.3 percent
seszett 7y ago
Well, in all logic one should expect larger, less densely populated countries, to have a higher percentage of employees working from home. The population density and the size of the Netherlands (ignoring the fact that it is not the smallest country of Europe in any kind of sense) is not an obvious factor for making more people work from home, since it should make it easier for people to commute to work. The awful traffic and saturated road network though might play a role in this.
hellofunk 7y ago
By what measure do you call the Netherlands the smallest country in Europe?!
- cantexplain 7y ago
  By percentage of cyclists wearing helmets. But joking aside, by none, really. The Netherlands is very dense, and indeed quite small, but it's not the smallest by any common metric - size, population, economy.
jacquesm 7y ago
Beats being in a traffic jam for 45 minutes mornings and evenings and is better for the environment.
tremon 7y ago
The Netherlands is ranked #7 in the EU in terms of labour force, around 5% of the total EU workforce (with the UK gone, Germany, France and Italy form the top three, together they account for about 50% of the workforce).
marcosdumay 7y ago
Usually, the highest percentage of anything happens on the smallest groups.

Smallest country in Europe has the highest percentage of employees working form home

by jelly1 7y ago

Smallest country in Europe has the highest percentage of employees working form home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... lists a number of European countries which are smaller than the Netherlands, including Belgium and Albania.

jdhdbebdxu 7y ago
What does this actually add? They were clearly jabbing at the fact it's easy to have good ratios when your country is tiny. Whether or not their example is actually the tiniest is only semi-relevant with respect to the point being made. This is like when European nations talk about the high publication rates of their academics, good ratios are easy when your country's slice of the pie is miniscule.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on why population size skews working from home distributions? It isn't obvious to me.
  - ageitgey 7y ago
    It's effectively cherry-picking data. If you want to encourage something as public policy (like working from home, recycling, public transit, etc), it's a lot easier to deploy a new program at a 'city level' where everyone more or less lives and travels in similar way than than at a US Federal level where you are dealing with over 300 million people who live in all kinds of geography and all kinds of different situations. The US covers everything from highly urban areas to vast, unpopulated deserts and mountains. The Netherlands is about the size (population wise) of a large city like Shanghai and it's fairly consistent in geography and urbanization throughout the entire country. That's just much easier situation to influence than a vast country like the US. It's a much simpler problem. It would be more fair to compare the US with all of Europe, including Spain, Greece, Croatia, etc. What percent of people are working from home in Croatia? And how does that compare to a Netherlands-sized cherry picked area in the US, like the New York City metro area? See how that's an unfair comparison? According to the article, the US vs. the entire EU rates are not too far off.
    - seszett 7y ago
      > It would be more fair to compare the US with all of Europe, including Spain, Greece, Croatia, etc. What percent of people are working from home in Croatia? These are all shown on the map. Only a handful small Eastern European countries (plus Greece) have lower rates than the US. Spain has 4.3% people working from home. Countries both with lower and higher population density than the US have higher numbers. > According to the article, the US vs. the entire EU rates are not too far off. EU is 5.2% and the US 2.8%, that's about half of the EU.
    - Aaargh20318 7y ago
      > it's a lot easier to deploy a new program at a 'city level' where everyone more or less lives and travels in similar way than than at a US Federal level where you are dealing with over 300 million people who live in all kinds of geography and all kinds of different situations. Why ? You can just treat the US a a collection of smaller communities and implement it independently in each of those. All you need to do at the federal level is to instruct the local level to tackle the issue.
  - Mattasher 7y ago
    Small sample sizes are much more likely to produce extreme results, because it's easier to get an extreme result by chance. In the US, the highest rates of cancer occur in the most rural counties. So do the lowest rates of cancer. Think about it like grabbing from a giant bag of M&M's. The fewer you select, the higher the chances your results will be skewed towards one color.
    - PeterStuer 7y ago
      But we are not sub-sampling here. We are comparing the whole of the Netherlands with the whole of the US right? We might take a big bag of M&M's and a smaller bag of M&M's, and count both of their contents, and find that the small bag has proportionally significantly more blue M&M's than the bigger bag.
- majos 7y ago
  1. it’s good to flag clearly false statements 2. it’s not a “fact it’s easy to have good ratios when your country is tiny”?
- eesmith 7y ago
  Jelly1's comment adds even less. If your observation about correlations is true, can we assume that Belgium and Albania have even higher ratios of employees that work from home? Belgium = 6.6%. Given that Belgium and the Netherlands are neighbors, with a majority Flemish population, this means simple size isn't the primary factor. (Albania isn't even listed.) Switzerland is only slightly larger than the European part of the Netherlands, and yet it has a rate of 4.1%. Population density might be a factor, but simple density isn't enough, as Finland's rate is 13.3% while the US has a density about twice that of Finland. Since size isn't a clear factor, and density isn't a clear factor, I could not makes sense of Jelly1's comment. It did not come across as an informed jab but a factually incorrect statement, which I tried to highlight, without a verbose analysis like this one.

RayMan1 7y ago

Finland is 8-th biggest country in Europe (Russia included) and it follows the Netherlands with 13.3 percent

seszett 7y ago

Well, in all logic one should expect larger, less densely populated countries, to have a higher percentage of employees working from home. The population density and the size of the Netherlands (ignoring the fact that it is not the smallest country of Europe in any kind of sense) is not an obvious factor for making more people work from home, since it should make it easier for people to commute to work. The awful traffic and saturated road network though might play a role in this.

hellofunk 7y ago

By what measure do you call the Netherlands the smallest country in Europe?!

cantexplain 7y ago
By percentage of cyclists wearing helmets. But joking aside, by none, really. The Netherlands is very dense, and indeed quite small, but it's not the smallest by any common metric - size, population, economy.

jacquesm 7y ago

Beats being in a traffic jam for 45 minutes mornings and evenings and is better for the environment.

tremon 7y ago

The Netherlands is ranked #7 in the EU in terms of labour force, around 5% of the total EU workforce (with the UK gone, Germany, France and Italy form the top three, together they account for about 50% of the workforce).

marcosdumay 7y ago

Usually, the highest percentage of anything happens on the smallest groups.