Study: U.S. employees put in most hours
August 31, 2001 Posted: 2:07 AM EDT (0607 GMT)
By Porter Anderson
(CNN) -- You're not imagining it. The United Nations' International Labor Organization (ILO) has the proof:
"Workers in the United States are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world."
Lawrence Jeff Johnson -- the chief labor market economist who has led the ILO team in producing its new "Key Indicators of the Labor Market 2001-2002" study -- also says American workers are, per person, more productive than their counterparts in other countries.
"But we're not the most efficient, when you compare it per hour, looking at the Belgians and the French."
It seems almost cruel to mention this to our Stateside readers on Labor Day weekend, but Johnson says the Europeans' comparatively long vacations -- four to six weeks per worker -- may have something to do with this. "Maybe they're not so stressed" as American workers, who on the average may get two weeks' vacation.
"But if we're working ourselves to death in the United States," he asks, "why are we increasing the hours? Almost every year we increase the hours of work. American workers put in long hours to make up the gains" in efficiency seen in France and Belgium.
"There are lessons to be learned from workers in Europe."
"I'm not going to say that the Europeans do it better," Johnson says, "but we (Americans) need to open ourselves up to learning a little more from others. We don't always do it best."
In hard numbers, what Johnson is saying is that his ILO statistics show that last year the average American worked 1,978 hours -- up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That represents an increase of almost a week of work. And it registers Americans as working longer hours than Canadians, Germans, Japanese and other workers.
What's even more concerning, especially to Johnson and his fellow ILO analysts, is that "the increase in the number of hours worked within the United States runs counter to the trend in other industrialized nations," he says. There, "we're seeing a declining number of hours worked annually."
Using the most recently available data, the ILO has determined that the average Australian, Canadian, Japanese or Mexican worker was on the job roughly 100 hours less than the average American in a year -- that's almost two-and-a-half weeks less. Brazilians and British employees worked some 250 hours, or more than five weeks, less than Americans. Germans worked roughly 500 hours, or 12-and-a-half weeks, less than careerists in the States.
Of countries classified as "developing" or "in transition," only South Korea and the Czech Republic tracked workers putting in more hours than American laborers. The Koreans logged almost 500 hours more annually than Americans, the Czechs doing some 100 hours more work than U.S. workers on average.
