GDP / working hour is a better metric IMHO. French people work a lot less than Americans on average. My former colleagues from Academia there enjoyed 8-10 weeks

GDP / working hour is a better metric IMHO. French people work a lot less than Americans on average. My former colleagues from Academia there enjoyed 8-10 weeks of vacation per year, plus a sizeable number of public holidays. On paper they also worked fewer hours than most people in the US, I think their contracts were for 30-32 hours per week on average. Most of them worked way more though since they really enjoyed their research. Their contracts allowed them to add all that overtime to a "time account" that they could eventually cash in to e.g. take a year-long sabbatical (fully paid of course) a couple of times during their careers. Also, there's free and full health coverage included, a state pension, family money and time off for raising children etc. etc.. And don't forget that life in France is also (mostly) amazing: Beautiful nature, amazing food, great culture. I'm German btw and I swear I don't get money from the French government for praising them, I just really liked living there for a while. So I guess you have to decide if having 20 % more GDP per capita is worth throwing away all those luxuries. Having spent time both in the US and in various European countries I'd say no, for most people it's not a good deal. People working in tech are an anomaly BTW, so I'd exclude them from this discussion as they're making up less than 1 % of the working population, hence they are a pretty exclusive and not very representative group of people. All the positive things aside it seems young people there also struggle way more than the older generations, as housing prices etc. have gone up immensely (in the Paris region e.g. you can pretty much forget to buy a house as a young middle class family).