Download Americans Lead the World in Hours Worked

September 7, 1999
Americans Lead the World in Hours Worked
By ELIZABETH OLSON
Americans put in the longest hours among workers in industrialized countries, according
to a report released today.
But increasingly efficient Europeans and Japanese workers are chipping away at the
United States lead in productivity -- the amount of goods and services produced for each
hour worked -- according to the 600-page study by the International Labor Organization.
Americans put in an average 1,966 hours at work in 1997, the most recent year studied.
That is 83 more hours, an increase of nearly 4 percent, than the average 1,883 recorded
by United States workers in 1980, according to a United Nations agency report on global
labor trends.
''Currently, the U.S. worker works more hours than his or her counterpart in other
industrialized countries and he or she also leads the way in terms of productivity,'' said
Lawrence Jeff Johnson, the labor organization economist and co-author of the study,
''Key Indicators of the Labor Market.''
The annual report examines 18 facets of the labor market, including productivity, costs,
unemployment and underemployment and hours worked in more than 240 countries
between 1980 and 1997.
American workers continue to outstrip their European and Asian counterparts, producing
an average $49,905 of goods in 1996 -- more than other countries for which statistics
were available. But the gap in some cases was narrow. The French lead the Europeans,
producing an average $47,958 for each worker, followed by Germany at $46,100 and
Britain at $38,890. In Japan, the average worker produced $39,434 in 1996.
In comparing productivity gains, however, the United States was behind its rivals in the
period studied. The country gained 22 percent between 1980 and 1996. That fell short of
the gains of 141 percent in Thailand, 43 percent in Japan and 30 percent in France,
Germany and England in the same period, the study found.
The findings followed last week's United States Labor Department report that American
productivity growth had slowed from 6.8 percent in manufacturing in the first three
months of 1999, to a rate of 4.8 percent.
''While the benefits of hard work are clear, working more is not the same as working
better,'' the labor organization's head, Juan Somavia, said of the report's findings.
While Americans were putting in more time at the office, Western Europeans logged
fewer hours, with the French, who are considering legislation to shorten the work week to
35 hours, clocking in 1,656 hours annually in 1997 and the Germans working an average
of 1,560 in 1996, the last year for which comparable data was available. Norway was at
the bottom, with an average 1,399 hours worked in 1997.
Japanese workers logged 1,889 hours in 1995, the last year for which statistics were
available, compared with 2,121 in 1980.
The report was produced by the International Labor Organization together with the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and drew on statistics from
the United Nations, the World Bank, and the statistical offices of the European Union and
the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.