(Long with numbers, short version. Working long != prosperity
So me and my girlfriend, who is from Hong Kong, discussed the value of long working hours (Hong kong having one of the longest; link that looks dodgy but quotes UBS). And long story short she feels sad over the fact that HK'ers work too long and have a bad work/life balance, and that it's all driven by the all too familiar hamster wheel of get your own place, more stuff and money == better, thus you should work more!
So to boost her a bit regardning the whole working longer makes you more prosperous ide might be bit more complicated, I decided to compile a silly little list. Aand a little plowing trough OECD's statisitcs on GDP and average working hours per year later:
https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
And some random googling for the numbers regardning Hong Kong (Hkg here and µ being the OECD average), the following plopped out:
From lists of the total working hours 2016 (worse formatting I'm afraid):
And GDP per person 2016
This is not really anything earth shattering and comes with a truck load of caveats such as:
That aside, for a handwavy Excel exercise on the "correlation" of working hours and some form of societal prosperity, the whole "work more makes you richer" seems a bit specious. (There is other work regarding working hours and productivity not following each other)
Now for something to make this "I put all this work into this list, and I want to share" thread worth a bit more worth while discussion wise(?), look at the following working hours per year and then my compliled list:
Mexico 2255,00
Netherlands 1430,00
So me and my girlfriend, who is from Hong Kong, discussed the value of long working hours (Hong kong having one of the longest; link that looks dodgy but quotes UBS). And long story short she feels sad over the fact that HK'ers work too long and have a bad work/life balance, and that it's all driven by the all too familiar hamster wheel of get your own place, more stuff and money == better, thus you should work more!
So to boost her a bit regardning the whole working longer makes you more prosperous ide might be bit more complicated, I decided to compile a silly little list. Aand a little plowing trough OECD's statisitcs on GDP and average working hours per year later:
https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
And some random googling for the numbers regardning Hong Kong (Hkg here and µ being the OECD average), the following plopped out:
Code:
Lux 69,95 1 294
Nor 41,62 2 175
Irl 37,36 3 157
Nld 35,86 4 151
Deu 35,83 5 151
Den 35,33 6 149
Usa 32,15 7 135
Aut 31,31 8 132
Swe 30,28 9 127
Aus 28,62 10 120
Fra 28,19 11 118
Isl 27,15 12 114
Fin 26,23 13 110
Can 25,85 14 109
Gbr 25,45 15 107
Jpn 24,25 16 102
µ 23,79 17 100
Hkg 22,47 18 94
Nzl 22,16 19 93
Ita 22,05 20 93
Esp 21,41 21 90
Isr 20,07 22 84
Cze 19,61 23 82
Svn 19,55 24 82
Svk 17,60 25 74
Kor 17,36 26 73
Prt 16,62 27 70
Ltu 15,86 28 67
Est 15,84 29 67
Hun 15,16 30 64
Pol 14,24 31 60
Lva 13,58 32 57
Grc 13,12 33 55
Chl 11,89 34 50
Rus 11,77 35 49
Mex 8,24 36 35
From lists of the total working hours 2016 (worse formatting I'm afraid):
Code:
Australia 1669,00
Austria 1601,00
Belgium ..
Canada 1703,00
Chile 1974,00
Czech Republic 1770,00
Denmark 1410,00
Estonia 1855,00
Finland 1653,00
France 1472,00
Germany 1363,00
Greece 2035,00
Hungary 1761,00
Iceland 1883,00
Ireland 1879,00
Israel 1889,00
Italy 1730,00
Japan 1713,00
Korea 2069,00
Latvia 1910,00
Luxembourg 1512,00
Mexico 2255,00
Netherlands 1430,00
New Zealand 1752,00
Norway 1424,00
Poland 1928,00
Portugal 1842,00
Slovak Republic 1740,00
Slovenia 1682,00
Spain 1695,00
Sweden 1621,00
Switzerland ..
Turkey ..
United Kingdom 1676,00
United States 1783,00
OECD countries 1763,00
Costa Rica 2212,00
Lithuania 1885,00
Russian Federation 1974,00
Hong Kong 2605,72
And GDP per person 2016
Code:
AUS 47770
AUT 50125
BEL 46701
CAN 44025
CZE 34704
DNK 49810
FIN 43363
FRA 41490
DEU 48839
GRC 26691
HUN 26689
ISL 51122
IRL 70202
ITA 38147
JPN 41534
KOR 35921
LUX 105768
MEX 18583
NLD 51285
NZL 38833
NOR 59267
POL 27464
PRT 30612
SVK 30619
ESP 36291
SWE 49076
CHE 62898
TUR 24636
GBR 42651
USA 57325
CHL 23478
COL 14130
EST 29378
ISR 37915
RUS 23225
SVN 32888
ZAF 13229
EU28 39632
OECD 41937
OECDE 39115
LVA 25934
BRA 15243
LTU 29897
EA19 42074
ARG 20412
BGR 19058
HRV 23642
CYP 32307
MLT 37782
ROU 23406
HKG 58552
This is not really anything earth shattering and comes with a truck load of caveats such as:
GDP != income of inhabitants
How are those working hours calculated?
Why is the list of countries represented so small?
Some countries have industries/resources that scew the results
PPE?
That aside, for a handwavy Excel exercise on the "correlation" of working hours and some form of societal prosperity, the whole "work more makes you richer" seems a bit specious. (There is other work regarding working hours and productivity not following each other)
Now for something to make this "I put all this work into this list, and I want to share" thread worth a bit more worth while discussion wise(?), look at the following working hours per year and then my compliled list:
Mexico 2255,00
Netherlands 1430,00