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Working from home and the US-Europe divide
Americans are no longer the rich world’s great office drones.
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On average Americans work 1,811 hours per year, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
The Economist
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When it comes to economic growth, America comfortably beats Europe. Many factors have fed America’s outperformance, from tech innovation to vast oil reserves. But there is one explanation that seems almost too simplistic: that “Americans just work harder”, as the head of Norway’s oil fund put it in an interview with the Financial Times on April 24.
The numbers do in fact bear out this assertion – a rare case of national stereotypes being empirically provable. On average Americans work 1,811 hours per year, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly rich countries. That is 15 per cent more than in the European Union, where the average is 1,571 hours.
