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by brmgb 1928 days ago
> The UK has notoriously low productivity compared to Europe and the US, and longer average work hours than the rest of Europe.

You should be very wary of productivity statistics coming from Europe.

I have worked most of the past decade in France. Like most highly educated employee in France, my contract is in days and not in hours. Officialy and legally, I have no set hours but for accounting purpose I have always officialy worked 37.5 hours a week. In reality, I have never worked less than 42.5 hours and weeks above 45 hours are both common and expected.

This is the norm not the exception.
1 comments
vidarh 1928 days ago
People in the UK "officially and legally" have much the same situation, and in reality most people still work longer than the officially stated hours.

Most of the numbers I can find for Europe is from surveys of employees, not gathered from data on labour contracts.

E.g. pretty much all of the EU numbers draws on the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS)

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brmgb 1928 days ago
> Most of the numbers I can find for Europe is from surveys of employees, not gathered from data on labour contracts.

Then you are looking at it extremely poorly without obnoxious quotes.

Most of the official stastics on productivity like the one published by Eurostat are derived from the total amount of hours worked which is estimated based on contracts.

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vidarh 1928 days ago
EU-LFS, which I referenced, is published by Eurostat, is a core part of the official Eurostat data, and is survey-based, not derived from estimates of contracts.

Here is Eurostat's EU-LFS data browser for "hours worked per week of full time employment":

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00071/defa...

You can find the actual questionnaires used for carrying out these surveys here:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

You'll note they include asking for the same information (estimates of hours worked) several different ways (with and without overtime, and asking separately for the overtime) and that they include instructions to the interviewer for confirming that the result is internally consistent.

EU-LFS is the main source of data on those aspects for the EU. Measuring overall productivity then comes from matching economic indicators up against hours worked.

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mattmanser 1928 days ago
You're just making stuff up, here's a study that contradicts you directly:

https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/...

See page 14 of the executive study:

- However, simple international comparisons can be misleading. In particular, the UK position (mid-range) is distorted by the fact that, compared with most other EU states, the UK employs a high proportion of part-time women workers (working fewer than 30 hours a week).

- Amongst full-time employees, the UK shows high levels of long hours working (over 48 hours a week), especially amongst men where the UK has the highest level of long hours working in the EU. Just over one-fifth (22 per cent) of UK men working full-time work long hours compared with an average of one tenth (11 per cent) across the other EU member states.

- Full-time male managers work the longest hours in the UK and across the EU member states as a whole. However, (on average) UK managers do not work longer hours than their EU counterparts

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