Charlotte MacDonald
speaker
1,889 appearances
62 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2010
last heard Apr 2025
Charlotte MacDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
If you look at the average annual hours worked by each worker, the Greeks seem actually very hard working.
That's according to figures from the OECD, which has 34 members, 15 of which are in Europe.
It estimated that last year the average Greek worker toiled away for more than 2,000 hours, which is more than any other worker in Europe, and lagging behind only Mexico, Costa Rica and South Korea.
On the other hand, the average German worker, normally thought of as the very epitome of industriousness, only manages 1,371, fewer than any other OECD country for which there is data.
This means the average Greek is working 40% longer.
I suspect not.
Yeah, obviously you're right.
I couldn't help but wonder if there was more to this.
So I contacted the OECD and spoke to Pascal Mariana, who is a labour market statistician.
Now, the reason this high number of self-employed makes a difference is that these people tend to work more than those who have specified hours of work in a contract with an employer.
Yeah, they are working longer.
And there's something else that's pulling down the German average.
So the fact their labour markets are structured differently makes it hard to compare like with like.
But if you accounted for these factors, stripping away part-time and self-employed people and look just at full-time salaried workers... Let me guess, the Germans work harder than the Greeks.
Actually, no.
On this basis, the German average has gone up while the Greeks has come down, but the Greeks are still working more hours than the Germans.
And this is because the Germans take more holiday and sickness leave, on average four weeks more than the Greeks.
That sort of scenario might mean that there's more work going on in total in Germany, but fewer hours per worker.
And to figure that out, you'd need to look not at hours per worker, but at hours per adult citizen of working age –
including the unemployed, people in early retirement, stay-at-home parents and so on.
Showing 161–180 of 1,889 · page 9 of 95
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