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.
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.<p>"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."
Funny.. in Europe, Germans are considered hard-working and Greeks typically "lazy". According to these stats, the truth is completely the opposite!
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.
Doesn't annual hours worked suffer from "measure as a target" issue among other things?<p>There frequently are incentives to misreport it based on company culture or perception among coworkers. Nor does it actually correspond to 'productive' hours.<p>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.
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<p>Also don't forget a standard 40 work week over a year is 2080 hours, significantly higher than the average.
Working less hours is better. Then you can spend more time with people that matter family and friends.<p>There is no point in working much just for the sake of it.<p>Also working hours vs gdp should show that you can work less hours and still have a high gdp.
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.<p>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.
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.
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. */