Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2013. Its ranking combines average annual hours worked and average retirement age as they were then, and the “recent” report naming France as having the most productive workers dates from 2013. The chart this article describes could not be recovered.
The Vizual-Statistix Tumblr has put together a chart of OECD countries (picked up by Business Insider) that basically answers the question of which countries work the hardest and which work the least. The closer a country is to orange, the “harder the work”; the closer to blue, the more bearable the work, with more relaxed and happier workers.
As the chart shows, there is one clear winner and two clear losers. The countries with the hardest work would be Mexico, Chile and South Korea, while at the other end, with the least demanding work, would be France in first place, followed by Germany. To gather this information, the chart took into account the average number of hours worked per year and the average retirement age.
That said, I really think what is being measured is the productivity of their workers, since this would match France’s recent naming as the country with the most productive workers (they produce more in fewer hours), also known as working smart. Likewise, as it happens, the three losing countries were included in the ranking of developed countries with the worst quality of life.
Note: some countries do not appear because they are not OECD members.
Featured image: Yuasan, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
