Do longer hours mean greater productivity?

What should be considered a good work week? Retired radio talk show host Neal Boortz, who was a lawyer before he got into the radio business, regularly opined “the 40-hour work week is for losers.” His belief was that 40 hours was what the lazy person would put in – the bare minimum, only what is required. The true high-achiever would put in much more. He was far from alone. TV shows and movies often glorify the 14-hour day, showing up at 7 AM, eating lunch at the desk while continuing to work, and not leaving until 9 PM. With the vast majority of city workers facing a minimum of 30 minutes of commute time, and 60 minutes getting more and more common, those that espouse this philosophy must reason that 4-5 hours of sleep and 2-3 hours of time with loved ones must be OK.

Guess what? The numbers don’t back the workaholics up.

Forbes recently published a study on the productivity and amount of hours worked among the 15 most-developed economies. Here is the list ranked from highest  to lowest GDP per hour:

For another perspective, here are the countries ranked from lowest to highest number of hours worked:

To attempt to gain some insight on this relationship and productivity, I assigned an overly-simplistic scoring system. I ranked the countries 1-15 on productivity, giving 1 point for the highest-ranking country (Ireland), 2 for the second-highest (Norway), and so on. Then I ranked the countries 1-15 based on lowest number of hours, again 1 for the country with the lowest number of hours (Germany), 2 for the second-lowest (Norway), and so on. Then I added each country’s two rankings to get a “composite’ score, then ranked the countries 1-15 with the lowest composite score first. This is what that looks like:

I know this is overly-simplistic and doesn’t tell the whole story of any of the 15 nations. However, it does provide some context to the debate on what constitutes “hard work” or being a “workaholic.” What are some of the conclusions we can draw?

Greece, South Korea and Mexico are tough places to work. Those 3 countries ranked 13-15, in that order, in both measurements – they have the 3 lowest productivity scores and are the 3 countries where the number of hours worked is the highest. Not a rosy outlook.

The USA is right in the middle. For people like me who want to believe in American exceptionalism – you know, that belief that the USA is the best in the world at everything, a not-all-that-popular opinion in current politics – this is a slice of humble pie. We’re in the middle of these rankings, with 7 countries ahead and 7 countries behind. We managed this by being 4^th in productivity and 4^th-worst in hours worked.

The European Union is the clear winner. The top 5 are all EU members. They take 5 of the top 6 productivity spots and the top 4 lowest hours worked spots. Germany and Norway work the fewest number of hours and rank third and second in productivity to tie for the top spot.

There’s something in the water in Ireland. They are only 11^th in shortest hours but are the most productive, and by a long shot. Their GDP per hour of 99.50 is about 20% better than #2 Norway.

Compelling stories exist in some individual comparisons. Ireland and the USA basically work the same number of hours each year, but Ireland production is 38% higher. Also, Germany and the USA produce at essentially the same rate, but Germany works 30% fewer hours. And what’s going on at the bottom of the scale? South Korea and Mexico are very similar in hours worked, but South Korea is 80% more productive.

What’s the ultimate conclusion? To me, the US needs to examine what they are doing in Europe to see what we can use here, especially in Germany and Ireland. They seem to have found that sweet spot where time is evenly split between work and other worthy pursuits. If nothing else, they seem to have proven that the 40-hour work week is more for winners than losers.