
Average annual hours worked per country - ShadowFaxSam
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS#
======
betadreamer
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.

~~~
hectormalot
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.

~~~
germinalphrase
Would you attribute this higher rate of part time work to a strong social
welfare system in the Netherlands or to some other factor?

~~~
stevesimmons
Here are some "anecdata" from my 6 years working in the Netherlands:

* 4 day weeks are very common: I worked for a Dutch Bank for 3 years. Virtually all the Dutch "full time" staff worked 4 day weeks. The deal was work 10% less (36 instead of 40 hours), extend the working day a notional one hour on Monday to Thursday, and take every Friday off. Not bad for a 10% reduction in salary. And since everyone does it - even senior managers - there is no loss in promotion prospects.

* High levels of self-employment as independent contractors - "ZZP-ers" \- zelfstandig zonder personeel (self-supporting without employees), often from mid-career professionals taking redundancy packages and setting up for themselves with greater flexibility for work-life balance at often slightly lower take home pay.

* Strong social net, health system, pension provision, social housing, etc, mean most Dutch people have very little to worry about. They can afford to prioritise enjoying life over being a slave to their employer.

One final anecdote concerns my local cafe in Amsterdam... In Melbourne, the
equivalent cafe opened at 6:30am and was busy by 7am. The one near me in
Amsterdam opened at 8:29am (yes, not 8:30...). When I asked why they didn't
open earlier, the owner said the staff didn't want to start that early, and
neither did he.

~~~
schnevets
The ZZP idea is particularly intriguing to me. Do you think this is a direct
result of the strong social net, or a sense of independence that existed in
Dutch culture before benefits?

~~~
roel_v
What 'strong social net' are people referring to in this thread? As an
independent contractor ('zzp'), you don't get unemployment benefits, no
insurance against not being able to work and you have to get your own health
insurance like everyone else. 'Bijstand'? I mean, that's food stamp level, and
you can't have any assets to be eligible in the first place.

~~~
refurb
HN has a core belief that many EU countries have an immensely more generous
social safety net than the US despite the US having welfare, social security,
Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, etc.

Having lives in Canada for many years, I didn’t find it that different than
the US with the exception of healthcare.

~~~
dragonwriter
> HN has a core belief that many EU countries have an immensely more generous
> social safety net than the US despite the US having welfare, social
> security, Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, etc.

It is an simple fact that a number of EU countries have an immensely more
generous social safety net than the US, even with the US having some basic
support for families with dependent children in poverty, a minimal safety net
pension, some minimal provision for the medically indigent, some basic
provision for health care for aged ex-workers, and a system of food support
for the poor.

> Having lives in Canada for many years, I didn’t find it that different than
> the US with the exception of healthcare.

Even assuming that the claim made here based on the flimsiest of claims of
authority was correct, it is irrelevant, Canada is not even an EU member, much
less a country they supports any generalization about the EU.

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gweinberg
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."

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

~~~
aserafini
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
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...

~~~
toomanybeersies
I really wish flexitime was a thing in more countries. I'd happily work 45
hours a week in exchange for an extra couple of weeks of annual leave. 4 weeks
(Australian standard leave) just isn't long enough for a good trip anywhere,
especially since you usually end up burning a week of leave through the year
for random things.

~~~
arvinsim
Most Asian countries only have 15 days annual leaves...

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ashray5
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
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
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
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.

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antisthenes
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.

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tomatotomato37
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
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
Maybe a lot of agriculture and small business?

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acd
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.

~~~
gascan
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
Increase working hours in the US by 10% across the board and the GDP will
likely not increase at all.

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WhompingWindows
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.

~~~
ewestern
>> 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
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
> 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?

~~~
ainiriand
Hahaha yes, sorry about that I always mix both concepts in english... In
spanish there is no way to mix them as the wording is completely different.

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nickthemagicman
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
1) You are not factoring any holidays by dividing by 52

2) People also work part time

~~~
nickthemagicman
Ah thanks. But still seems like a smaller number than I was expecting.

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stockkid
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.

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mxuribe
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
Just sit back in your armchair and take some well deserved rest

