So, I have heard, from time to time, abuot how in Europe, they take many more days off from work than we do in the US, and I seem to recall something recently about 2 hour lunches being the norm in France. So this is a two-part question:
To start with, is this true, in regards to Europeans spending far fewer days in work than Americans?
Have there been any studies comparing the productivity of European workers vs. American workers? If so, how did they compare? I mean, it’s possible that while we work far more days than Europeans do, they might spend less time goofing around on the internet or something.
#1 is definitely true. Here is a cite from The Economist that is probably the most reliable that you will find. The U.S. is tied for fist place with Australia and New Zealand. Western Europe has a wide range with some way down the ladder. It isn’t really surprising if you visit some of the countries in question. France has a 35 hour work week by law and vacation time is much higher than the U.S. across most of western Europe. Some countries almost completely close down for the entire month of August for example. In Italy and France, even restaurants close down in the middle of the day for an hour or two and the workers generally have the time off.
For #2 is more debatable but the U.S. always ranks high in worker productivity studies as well and often comes out number one.
The productivity analyses are more complicated because of very different industries like manufacturing, sales, service industries etc. It makes it hard to put one number on a country.
However, here are a bunch of official comparisons if you are interested.
The U.S. ranks at or near the top of them up until 2005 (the last numbers available). That is good because it would really suck if we just had to work all those hours because we just aren’t good at it.
Yes. We have much more vacation days, generally speaking. In France, for instance, by law, we get 5 weeks/year + various holydays.
Of course there have been such studies. Actually, I believe some organization publish yearly this comparison (including all countries, not merely european countries and the USA). I don’t have a link, though.
American workers have one of the highest productivity per year. But european workers have a significantly higher productivity per hour worked, generally speaking (If I’m not mistaken, Belgium had the highest productivity per hour two years ago).
For instance and from vague memory France was third or so in productivity/hour and 20th-30th in productivity/year, and it was more or less the reverse for the USA, still two years ago.
From a purely anecdotal point of view, I’ve been told by french people who had worked in the USA that american office drones spent countless hours at their offices, but hardly ever worked while there, too busy socializing by the coffee machine, chatting on the phone or surfing on the internet. Anecdotal, but in agreement with statistics . In any case, it makes sense that the marginal productivity decreases when the number of hour worked increases (people working longer will use the extra hours for less important tasks or simply will get tired). I would also note that productivity is highly dependant on the activity, and in particular people working in services (banks, advertisment, tourism, etc…) are more productive than people working in the industrial sector. And if I’m not mistaken, services make for a larger %age of the economy in the EU than in the USA. But of course, cultural peculiarities might play an important role.
Cool beans. On a related subject, I’ve also read that during WWI, the US Navy had one of the best records for time at sea vs. time in port (ships had to spend a certain time in port resupplying, performing needed repairs/maintinance, resting or reorganizing crews, etc.). Supposedly the US Navy minimized their time in port by figuring out how to do things like engine maintinance while the ship was at sea. I can’t remember where I read this though, so if anyone knows about that one way or the other, that’d be cool too.
If that statistic is correct I would be inclined to attribute it to a newer fleet of better-built ships with much less wartime wear and tear than to cunning maintenance procedures.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that in the UK we may take more holidays, but when we’re at work we are there for longer hours than our US counterparts. I work in a university and I know we get more holidays per year than other people doing similar admin-type jobs in other sectors. This is apparently because our campus is so big that it’s actually cheaper to close it and have all the staff on paid leave rather than open bits of it when people want to be in.
This is particularly true over the Christmas/New Year period where the whole place shuts from about 23 Dec until early Jan. If a couple of people in one building wanted to come in, we’d need to have cleaners, security, catering, heating etc…and it’s much more cost-effective to just pay the lot of us to stay at home.
is true in general and for Western Europe (yo, Romania and Russia are Europe too!) but it does not mean we work less hours. Also, some countries* have ridiculous amounts of unreported overtime, either unpaid or paid under the table, which leads to
these studies play with fudged data, so I don’t trust them. On both sides of the Atlantic I’ve seen people buy online while at work and people work while in a plane.
My own experience, after working in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, England, Switzerland, Texas, Florida, Philadelphia, Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica, is that the differences are due more to “local company culture” than to whatever the local regulations or even the parent company say. Sometimes I’ve been in two workplaces within minutes of each other and in one people worked 8 highly-productive straight hours and in the other it was 12 hours of staring at the screen because “you have to show your dedication to the company” (a line I’ve gotten in Italy, Spain, Brazil and 3 different US locations).
if Spain’s “submerged economy” was any bigger, we’d float up from the bottom of the ocean and start flitting about.
The difficulty I have with this (and indeed all) type of comparison question between Europe and America is that Europe is a collection of vastly different countries and cultures so there isn’t ever going to be a definitive ‘the Europeans do it this way’ answer. For instance, British work pactices are far similar to Us ones than they are to, say, southern Italian ones.
By and large, the answer to question one would be true of virtually any country in comparison with the US, mainly because the US seems so amzingly stingy on holiday entitlement. But FAR fewer depends on which country you’re talking about.
As for the ‘2 hour lunch break’ query, I think there’s a misconception about the pattern of the working day across different cultures. A two hour lunchbreak doesn’t necessarily mean a shorter working day - for instance, in Southern Italy, all businesses typically close at 1pm for a four or even 5 hour lunchbreak. However, they start at 6 or 7am, are back at work at 5 or 6pm and don’t leave work til 8 or 9pm. It’s just a different way of carving up the day - a system designed to avoid the scorching heat of the day.
Hear hear to everything SanVito says. AFAIK (from a recent study that was in the news but that I can’t find online, so take with a pinch of salt) the Brits work the longest hours in Europe, but the French are the most productive given the hours worked.
As an aside, I did find this 1963 article about working practices. The most interesting bit:
This seems to imply that the US used to have vacation time approaching the figures quoted!
How is it measured? suppose you "work’ for the depatment of equal opportunities…your "work’ consists of writing reports 9which nobody reads0. How would your “productivity” be measured?
The U S Navy’s ability to stay at sea began prior to WWII, and to some degree now can be equated to two things. The first would be underway replenishment, that was perfected by the US navy in the late 1930’s. Second, is/was the training of enlisted personnel. The ability of our junior Sailors to maintain and repair even major equipment while at sea is truly amazing.
Not to hijack the thread, but Raguleader referred to WW1 - meaning the comparison of a brand-new navy at war for total duration of 18 months with others which had already been operating under wartime conditions for 3 years prior is not going to give you a realistic picture.
The best I can come up with is this which unfortunately is focused only on hours per week, but seems to show work time decreasing and leisure time increasing in the US on a relatively steady trend
Taking a quick look at those tables, they seem to relate to changes in productivity, not absolute productivity. For instance in 1992 every country is baselined at 100, whereas now the US is at 195.7, S Korea is at 305.1, and Sweden is at 235.4. Without knowing the absolute numbers at some date it’s hard to tell what is going on, and I couldn’t find those anywhere on that site.
four weeks vacation a year is common here. We are frequently told that Americans commonly get only two weeks, and won’t necessarily dare to take all of that.
I was under the impression that sick days and holidays are often treated as one and the same in the US, so if you use all your holiday and then get sick you are in a spot of bother - I don’t know if this is accurate, but it would certainly explain why people carry a few unused days.
Anecdotal, but that is not my experience. At my last company, I accrued four hours of sick time per two weeks worked. So after a month, I had one day of sick time. Since I don’t get sick all that often, it added up pretty quickly. (Although it sucked when I got a cold in the first couple weeks on the job. I could take off a day without pay, but I didn’t want to look like a flake.)
In contrast, I got 2 weeks of vacation a year, plus a “floating holiday” that I could use whenever I wanted; we were encouraged to use it for our birthdays or a religious holiday that wasn’t a typical day off - I usually used mine for Yom Kippur. And I would agree that it is frowned upon using all the vacation time, at least all at once. I think my boss would have blanched had I requested two consecutive weeks off, although if it was a long-planned trip to another country, that would probably be a different story.
No, I wouldn’t say that is the general rule. Some employers do lump all under a single heading “Paid Time Off” – then it is usually at least 15 days altogether. Some distinguish between “vacation” (taken in lumps, usually scheduled) and “Personal time” (taken in one or two day increments, for any reason including short vacations, but unscheduled). Still others distinguish between “vacation” and “sick leave” (which I suppose you’re supposed to use only if sick… but how could they tell?) and “personal time” (bits of time for appointments and such). There are also several National holidays throughout the year which do not count against vacation time. Let’s see: Memorial Day, Labor Day, Independence day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Years Day. Certain industries are closed by custom between Christmas and New Years, but this is becoming less common.
At my old corporate job (Fortune 500 company with a reputation for being liberal) I got 10 days Paid Vacation and 9 days Personal Time (by company policy we did not need to give a reason for our absence – its personal – and it need not be scheduled.) After 5 years at the company you moved up to 15 days Paid Vacation as well as the 9 Personal Days. I believe this is a “very good” vacation policy as they go but not unique or exceptional. However, due to the nature of the business we could not take any scheduled vacation in November or December other than near national holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas), and generally, you could have scheduled vacation for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, but not both.
I’m learning a lot about Australia here, recently! There was that other recent thread about having to give the boss a doctor’s note if you’re out sick, which surprised me.
. In any case, it makes sense that the marginal productivity decreases when the number of hour worked increases (people working longer will use the extra hours for less important tasks or simply will get tired). I would also note that productivity is highly dependant on the activity, and in particular people working in services (banks, advertisment, tourism, etc…) are more productive than people working in the industrial sector. And if I’m not mistaken, services make for a larger %age of the economy in the EU than in the USA. But of course, cultural peculiarities might play an important role.