The Left Lane: Frame page-please click |Musing| below.

(click above to view other articles)

Vacate The Premises

I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that we Americans are crazy. How else does one explain the 40-hour work week and a mere two weeks of vacation per year? Of course, everyone in the States has been working these hours since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, so you might think I’m the one that’s crazy. But consider that the standard work week in Germany is 37.5 hours. France has recently adopted a 35-hour work week. Additionally, many countries also set the maximum hours allowed per week, but the United States has no statutory maximums. Americans can work 80 hours a week with impunity.

Many countries also have more mandatory vacation days. Sweden leads the pack with 32 days mandatory. Spain and France has 30 days. Even Japan has 25 days mandatory. How does America compare with this? America has no mandatory days, but the average is 13-16 days per year (depending on the source). In my company in Germany, German colleagues get six weeks of vacation in their first year. In America, you have to be either dead or retired to get that much time off from a company.

But wait, it gets worse. The United States also leads industrialized nations in hours worked per capita with nearly 2000 hours per year (1997). In contrast, Japan logged just under 1900 hours in 1995, Canada 1732 in 1996, and Germany just 1560 in 1996. And while the trend for other countries is to decrease the hours worked, in America, this number is increasing.

And I always thought America was a civilized country.

Hour Generation

So we’ve established that the Americans work a lot of hours. Now comes the question: why? (Followed immediately by the question: what are we thinking!?)

Obviously I cannot answer this question definitively. I can only guess why there are so many crazy people out there. There are those, of course, who are the true lunatics. These are the ones that actually like their jobs, enjoy being there, and love the sense of accomplishment they get. We can ignore them, because they are very ill.

There are also those that need to work all of those hours to put food on the table for their spouse(s), kids, dogs, cats, hamsters, etc. They do this out of necessity, and are not included in our analysis.

Then there are those that are hiding at work for various reasons. Maybe they don’t like being at home. Maybe they have a faster connection to the internet at work. These people don’t really count, simply because they would be hanging out at malls or train stations if they didn’t have jobs.

That leaves one last group. This would be the group that has the large-screen tv, a boat on the lake, a cabin up north, cell phone, PDAs, jet skis and probably at least one Porsche in the garage. Their reason for working all of those hours? It’s to maintain a supply of track tires for the Porsche, of course.

So there you have it, the real, broad-spectrum reason why Americans work so many hours. And whatever reason they chose for working so much, at least their last words won’t be: If I had only spent more time at work.

(EMan is an American expatriate living in Gemany, who believes in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of More Time Off.)

[January 2002]	[February 2002]	[March 2002]	[New World]
[New World]	[New World]	[New World]	[New World]
[New World]	[New World]	[New World]	[New World]

March 2002

Vacate The Premises

Hour Generation

Related Links