(6 Sep 1999) English/Nat

It’s official – Americans work longer than any other workers in the industrialised world .

But the report on global labour trends by the International Labour Organisation shows that the Japanese are not far behind.

However when it comes to productivity, it seems the Europeans are catching up on their American counterparts.

The International Labour Organisation’s (I-L-O) study, “Key Indicators of the Labour Market 1999”, compares information from 240 countries between 1980
and 1997.

It shows that U-S workers put in the longest hours on the job in industrialised nations, clocking up nearly two-thousand hours each in 1997.

That’s almost two weeks more than their closest counterparts, Japanese workers and is a four per cent increase since 1980.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
“That alone doesn’t mean much, but what is also interesting throughout the rest of the developed industrialised countries we are seeing a gradual decline in the annual hours worked. In 1980, for example, the Japanese, which most people look at when we try to do these comparisons, actually worked more hours than the average American. But what we’ve seen is a decrease of more than ten per cent. So now they are actually working less than the U-S. ”
SUPER CAPTION: Lawrence Jeff Johnson, I-L-O Economist

The report shows that Japanese workers were on the job for 1,889 hours a year – down from 2,121 hours in 1980.

The trend in the United States runs contrary to the world wide tendency that has seen hours at work remaining steady or declining in recent years.

The contrast is even sharper with European workers.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
“Europeans are also working less hours. They historically have worked slightly less than that of their American counterparts but over time they are also seeing a gradual downward trend. And a lot of these are caused by cultural differences, from time away from work. One example I like to give – in the U-S when a college graduate graduates and takes their first job its somewhat commonplace for them to get on average about two weeks annual leave. When you compare that to the Europeans, which on average range from four to six weeks, that affects those hours of work annually worked. So there are some basically underlying cultural differences in these numbers.”
SUPER CAPTION: Lawrence Jeff Johnson, I-L-O Economist

Europeans log progressively fewer hours on the job, particularly in the Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Sweden, where the hours are 1,399 and 1,552 respectively.

In France workers put in 1,656 hours in 1997 versus 1,810 in the 1980s and there was a similar decline in Germany.

Hours in the United Kingdom remained relatively stable, putting in 1,731 hours in 1997 as opposed to 1,775 in 1980.

The first instalment of the K-I-L-M report shed some light on what is happening in the work force, but the report’s author, Lawrence Jeff Johnson, says it will probably raise more questions than answers in the beginning.

Working more is not the same as working better and productivity figures tell a slightly different story.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
SUPER CAPTION: Lawrence Jeff Johnson, I-L-O Economist

His report shows that efficient work forces in Japan, South Korea and major European countries including France and Germany are increasingly challenging the productivity of U-S workers.

In its own report of the ‘State of the American Workforce’ the U-S National Association of Manufacturers (N-A-M) says that training is the key to having a productive and secure work force.

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