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.
“Tax haven”, though I like OP’s version too
Don’t trust me, see The Independent then. Jokes aside, thanks for the correction, I’ve always been unsure which one it is.
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Wolfgang Schäuble
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It would interesting to see this vs the average in the US.
Portuguese work way more than that
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.
cries in American
Also having some… spicy thoughts about french neoliberal politicians constantly saying German workers are so much better than us lazy assholes.
My guess is cause they are rich people from Paris and based on my experience with paris, that number is actually a cumulative number of hours for everyone who lives in Paris
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.
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.
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Working a lot is nothing to be proud of.
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.
English and Russians don’t even have jobs! /s
Hey, I live in the country that works the least… nice!
Got to have goals!
