Workaholic Greeks, Lazy Germans?
The financial and economic crisis that still gnaws the EU has made a first victim: solidarity between fellow Europeans. As troubled countries in the periphery risk dragging the whole edifice down, the debate has been mired by bickering, with a core number of northern countries blaming their southern partners of profligacy. In Germany, for instance, the populist daily Bild insisted with its rhetoric of comparing their hard-working compatriots with the lazy Greeks (and Italians, to a lesser extent), who should thus not be rescued in order to avoid further moral hazard.
Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself…
With the southerners desperately trying to find some counterarguments and wishing to get rid of the unflattering PIGS acronym (let’s assume the I stands for Italy), some undreamed-of help came from the 2011 employment outlook published by the OECD – a rich-country grouping. One of the indicators measured is the average annual working time, and the results are quite stunning: workers in southern countries work much more than those in the north. Whereas the OECD average is of 1749 hours per year, the Greeks work a whopping 2109 hours, followed by the Italians at 1778, the Portuguese at 1714 and the Spanish at 1663. On the other hand, the Swedes work for 1624 hours, the Danes for 1559, the Germans for 1419 and the Dutch for a lousy 1377.
All the northern European countries work less than their southern counterparts, and well below the OECD average. Ha! – you might hear in Athens – every year we work 690 hours more than the Germans! Who’s lazy now? In Italy, the news reported with some pride and with an implicit don’t-you-patronize-me tone that the Italians take less days off for holidays than the Germans.
…Or maybe not
Yet, a less superficial analysis would immediately reveal that these figures are actually quite shameful and should be cause for concern for any southern government. If northern European countries work much less but still manage to be better off, then something is terribly wrong. These figures obviously indicate that southern countries have a low productivity, which is one of the reasons their growth has lagged behind over the past years. The statistics available on the OECD’s website confirm this. If we take as a measure of productivity the amount of GDP produced per hour there is a clear trend: all the aforementioned northern countries have a higher productivity than the southern ones.
These results also impact on work-life balances. Another OECD research, which measured the amount of employees working very long hours, the employment rate of women with children and the time devoted to leisure and personal trend, highlights that northern countries have a healthier work-life balance.
If the new governments of the PIGS are to be true to their reformist agenda, then labor market and productivity-enhancing measures should be among their top priorities. As southern Europeans, we can either prefer to keep taking some delusional pride in the higher amount of hours we work, or we can take a look at what goes on up north, strive to work less, be richer and have a better work-life balance, which would arguably make us happier too. Perhaps we should start taking notes.
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