All work and no play

South Koreans worked longer hours last year than anyone else on the planet, 30 percent more than Americans and 65 percent longer than the French..... according to a study on working life by the International Labor Organization in Geneva issued this month. However, isince economists consider productivity as a more important measure of work rather than hours worked, then the study claim that the South Koreans "could easily cut back on their long hours if they raised their productivity, which on an hourly basis stands at just over one-third the level of the French."

For all the hubris in the US about the 35-hour week French work culture, the study concludes:
that "when the French work, they are extremely efficient. But since an employee takes five weeks of vacation or more, he or she produces less for a company over the course of a year than a worker in the United States. (France is still relatively competitive on a per-employee basis, however, coming in fifth place.)"

Also, in comparing Europe and the US,
"As Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser at Harvard and Bruce Sacerdote at Dartmouth pointed out in a paper published in March, Europeans worked about the same number of hours as Americans in the early 1970s but today work on average almost 50 percent fewer. The main difference is vacations, with Europeans often taking four or five weeks a year more than Americans. And this divergence explains a key nuance in understanding productivity, the important but tricky tool economists use to measure how efficient workers are. France is the world's most productive country on an hourly basis, according to the KILM. But measured on the basis of each employee, America is leagues ahead of every other country." Also, "the gap between Europe and the United States has been widening for several years, with the exception of Ireland, which is catching up to the United States."

Strikingly, the data show that not all countries become richer by working longer hours..though the example is maybe a one-off outlier (Ireland) rather than a trend.