Southern Europeans are not lazy!

By Prieur du Plessis, on January 19th, 2011 posted in: Economy, Europe

This chart below, courtesy of Société Générale (via Business Insider – Clusterstock) shows the gaps in labor utilization and labor productivity eurozone members need to make up in order to reach U.S. GDP per capita. The labor utilization number measures hours worked, while the labor productivity rate measures what’s produced.

“According to this chart, Portugal and Greece are actually working more than enough (negative numbers) while Germany and France need to work more (positive numbers) to make up the GDP per capita gap with the U.S. What this shows is that France and Germany work way more efficiently than Greece or Portugal, but don’t actually work more hours. So it may not be laziness dragging Greece and Portugal down, but instead costs and other inefficiencies,” said the report.

Very interesting indeed!

Source: Business Insider – Clusterstock, January 18, 2011.

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Southern Europeans are not lazy! | FavStocks

January 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm

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Denis

January 23, 2011 at 11:27 am

I often notice in less developed countries that people spend a lot of time at work (often even more than 12h a day/7 days a week) but they produce very little – on average a lot less than in some countries with a lot shorter working week.

And another thing is what they produce and how is valued as productivity is expressed in monetary value of produced goods and services. Usually, what they are producing is not highly valued.