Around Germany and Greece there were other countries. They went by names like frugal four and PIIGS. They forced “austerity” and stricter working hours onto indebted countries to save their own banks.
The colours on this map show well that northern “productivity” is not about working hours, but about other topics that did not get addressed. Among these topics are also tax heavens (think the Netherlands) and money laundering (think Austria’s special relationship with Russia).
So it was nothing more than poor political leadership without vision.
Also having some… spicy thoughts about french neoliberal politicians constantly saying German workers are so much better than us lazy assholes.
Yeah I have spicy thoughts for them too, would be great if they tried doing a real job to see how it feels
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Here’s the source for that image. While the article was published in 2024, the data is from 2023.
Tangentially related, last year Greece went to a six-day 48-hour work week.
They go to work for one half-hour, two half-hour. Then do something cool for lunch like a cigarette, 2-3 bottles of a red wine and a bowl of heavy cream.
I didn’t remember Greeks were accused of working too little hours. I thought the situation was blamed on corruption, tax evasion and ineptitude of the country’s leaders.
Unfortunately, I do remember some people misbehaving in such a manner. It weren’t any official statements, but there were undertones accusing them of laziness.
Because the yellow press correctly figured they could sell “we are much better than those lazy foreigners”. Nothing more, nothing less. As long as the average Bild reader gets to feel superior, all is well.
Bullshit, it was blamed on spending all the money in drinks and women:
There is a massive issue with that data. Namely that it only looks at people, who actually have a job. Generally speaking employers prefer full time workers over part time. Obviously somebody working part time is still more productive, then an unemployed person. In France 52.8% of women over 15 work, in Italy it is 41.3%. Then you get things like unemployment, which tends to be much much higher in the south.
That is why Spain is working on reducing the work week. It lower the high unemployment rate.
I agree for the rest, but wait to see how automotive failing to reform itself will lead to much much higher unemployment in the South of Germany.
I have nothing against Germans or automotive. I have a lot against local feudals and communities that are fine with them as long as they can call themselves a working class. If your slave owner is richer than someone else’s this doesn’t really make you richer, you are still as dependent as a slave.
The automotive industry is why Germany has such a bad time economicly speaking. At least in the last five years or so. Car sales in the Europe(EU, UK &EFTA) were 15,805,752 in 2019 and only 12,963,614 in 2024. Obviously car manufacturers prefer cheaper factories in eastern Europe over the more expensive German ones, hence you see them shrinking staff. For the suppliers it is even worse, as a lot of them are specialized in combustion engines. With BEVs doing what they do, that means mass layoffs. That is why German automotive industry only employees 761,000 workers today. In 2018 it was 834,000.
At the same time Germany is able to do much more then just automotive and those sectors are able to grow. Hence you see stagnation.
Greek bail out was inherently a bail out of bond holders… Many of which were German 🤡
That, and the eurozone in general.
Correct majority of bond holders were French and German.
What matter is the productivity of those hours, if they work longer hours but their time isn’t as productive then another country might be better off with less average work hours.
We could also ask why they work so much and we need to check unemployment levels and salaries. If the ones who work do so for 50h (pulling the average up), is it maybe because unemployment is high and wages are low so they need to compensate to feed their family?
I’m working in software. Don’t tell me that I’m more productive when I work in finance than when I work in social services. Because that’s what the numbers show. It’s just that in finance your work generates more revenue and gives you a bigger salary. That’s what productivity measures. And people in many places around the world, including Southern Europe do not really care about revenues as long as they have enough to live well. That’s how they end up with lower “productivity”. Of course in other sectors it’s not ai immediate, but it is the same. If you are a farmer and sell to your community, you’re not productive. If you export to retail chains you’re very productive.
Obviously you compare people doing the same thing. If two employees with the same position have vastly different productivity you know there’s an issue with one of them. It’s the same thing when comparing neighboring countries, two manufacturing plants producing the same thing have vastly different productivity for the same amount of work hours? What’s different between them?
I understand you’re fine with measuring everything in revenue. Fortunately, human happiness and satisfaction are not measured in dollars.
It isn’t necessarily revenues, how many patients a physiotherapist sees on average over a year is a measure of productivity, if you see that it’s much lower for all of them in country X vs Y then you can start looking at how they work compared to one another and you could realize that it’s a paperwork issue that makes the physios from country X less productive and then you can implement the paperwork management process from country Y in country X.
We have this exact issue where I’m from, doctors spend about 25% of their time doing paperwork where it’s much lower in other jurisdictions.
This is drifting off, but number of visits is not an indication of healthcare success. Perceived improvement could be.
Do I really have to give specific examples of everything or you’re able to extrapolate yourself that you use a mix of data to dress a portrait of the situation and then you’re able to compare and see the differences between countries or regions? In the end that’s what you’re looking for, inefficiencies that can be fixed.
Hell in office jobs it’s well known that they accomplish the same amount of work in 35h in France as they accomplish in 40h in the US as they accomplish in 60h in Japan, so clearly productivity per hour is best in France.
Exactly, often workers of mental labor have a general amount of mental labor they can give to their job per week. They’ll try to get that labor done at a pace suiting themselves and attempt to look busy the remainder of the time they’re at work. That or they’ll try to push themselves and often produce subpar work after a certain point. Good workers self optimize to the best of their ability and comfort. Letting them go home once they’ve done a day’s work can actually improve productivity as they don’t have to spend mental energy pretending to work or getting frustrated they aren’t finding the solutions and instead can rest or focus on recreational tasks and return refreshed.
Last I checked, and this is as an American, 30-32 hours is a pretty good amount. But labor has the right to fight for conditions better than that.
OP doesn’t seem to understand how these data are compiled.
In most tourism-related jobs (e.g. restaurants), people don’t count their hours.
This completely distorts the data for countries like France.
In Scandinavian countries and Germany, is common for 1 parent to work 50%. They also earn 50% (actually even less). This also distorts the data for these countries.
Finally, many of these states are about contractual hours. Not actual. If you work overtime, this is not accounted for. If you don’t declare employees, is the same. And if you don’t work, while being at work, i it’s still counted as work.
Final word about the critics of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. Most of these people criticized the fact that they take long breaks and “waste time” while at work (=do chitchat).
They usually don’t realize, that while Germans commonly leave work around 5pm, people in other countries stay until 6, 7 or even 8pm.
For the chitchat part, it’s mainly that they don’t value it.
Didn’t get too offended by idiots ;-)
Both this and the OP seem kinda confused, honestly.
The working hours argument was never an argument in the first place, at least at the level of government policy. This chart was used to dispell some myths among the population, but it wasn’t particularly new information for anybody making policy even at the time.
If anything, a frequent clarification in the impacted countries was that this shows a productivity issue in some of the Southern countries, where more hours and less output is an issue. And yes, the weight of retail and service industry jobs has an impact on that. Also, to my knowledge, this IS about actual worked hours, not contracted hours. These numbers don’t match contracted hours per country, and were bandied about to explain why excess overtime damages productivity, not the other way around.
None of this had much to do with austerity, beyond promoting or dispelling some stereotypes. Austerity was about investment and public spending and was demonstrably, patently some bullshit. Dogmatic German-style (and Dutch and British, don’t think I’ve forgotten) anti-spending policy proved itself counterproductive, useless and imprevious to facts, as the US kept cranking up investment, particularly under Democratic administrations, and outpacing European growth.
Which is not to say that Southern economies didn’t need reforms for productivity and increasing employment. But those reforms weren’t about cutting spending or public investment, beyond plugging the hole the housing and investment crisis left behind.
Thanks for putting the effort to detailing this.
So working 50% distorts the data by reporting 50% of the hours?
It’s opposed to when one party stays at home full time to take care of the children, it’s not counted, and doesn’t detract from average work hours of the people that have work.
It’s probably similar in other countries, but here (Denmark) the norm is that women work full time just as much as men, and this has been the case for decades. Also our unemployment rate has for years hovered around the theoretical minimum.
The retirement age has been increased, and is now about 70 years, and for younger generations it is set at 74!! IMO that’s too high, and I don’t believe the argument that it is necessary. But that’s what our government has done.
So as a population I’m pretty sure we probably have reasonably high average rate of work hours per capita.
I’m confused by your statements, but am looking at moving to Germany. Do you mean if my wife works full-time and I work full-time we’d end up being paid 50% each?
No but part time jobs are paid less, so if you work full time and get €2000,- and then switch to half time you will typically get less than €1000,-.
Exactly. Plus, you usually have less career perspective if you work 50%.
Am Greek. Working 44 hours on average (40 during winter, 48 during the summer).
Many in the tourism industry, which brings in 13% of Greece’s GDP, work for over 50 hours on average for 6 months, then they work mostly uninsured labor jobs in the winter, so that map only gives you half the truth.
Yeah, that ‘hours of work in main’ job really does something here.
I mean the guy working three part time jobs would clock in maybe 20ish hours on the main job but maybe 60 overall.
Working a lot is nothing to be proud of.
English and Russians don’t even have jobs! /s
Hey, I live in the country that works the least… nice!
Got to have goals!
Greek clocks don’t work most of the time either.
