Canadians Work Too Much

Do we work too much?
Dutch, French work 43 days less
Economies don't collapse: Experts
23 May 2006. 07.10 AM

STEVEN THEOBALD BUSINESS REPORTER

Ahhh; back on the job at last. Canada ought to cancel the May long weekend.

These words may sound like the rant of a deranged workaholic, but they actually do a pretty good job of describing our society's values when compared with those in many other wealthy countries. The average Canadian worked 1,751 hours in 2004. That's about 300 hours — or 43 seven-hour days — more than the Dutch, Germans, French or Danes.

European societies are at one end of the spectrum while Canada, the United States, Australia and Japan are at the other.

Magnus Schonning offers an interesting perspective. The 38-year-old Swede has been working at his country's embassy in Ottawa for four years. He gets 42 days of vacation annually, which includes a 10-day bonus for working abroad.

As a father of two children, he also gets as much as a year off, at 80 per cent pay, per youngster. "We work to live, and not live to work, Schonning explained.

Based on total economic output, adjusted by population and purchasing power, Canada's gross domestic product is very similar to that of many European countries, and below some.
The Irish, for example, work 6 per cent fewer hours, on average, yet the economic output per person beats ours by 14 per cent.

Most Canadian provinces require employers to provide only two weeks of vacation per year.
Canada could easily add another week to the minimum holiday times and the economy would not collapse, said Ron Burke, professor of organizational behaviour at York University's Schulich School of Business.

"Canadians could actually work fewer hours and it wouldn't make much of a dent in our GDP. And you'd have healthier workers."
Long working hours not only fail to promote efficiency, but may also increase the likelihood of people making mistakes, Burke said.

Powerful unions deserve much of the credit for bringing down average working hours in Europe, whereas the union movement in Canada and the United States is waning, Burke said.
For Canadian society in general, the last big cut in working hours came 50 years ago, when Canada cut the work week to five days from six, Jackson said.

Back then, the business community warned the economy would collapse as a result, and the same bogus arguments are being made today, Jackson said.
"Economists have found that every significant step that was taken to reduce working time was accompanied by a sharp increase in productivity."

Canadians' willingness to work longer hours than Europeans is ingrained in our culture, concludes Michael Huberman, an economics professor at the University of Montreal.
Europeans, in fact, have always valued leisure time more than people in the rest of the world, Huberman said.

"These work patterns have visible for a long time, way before modern welfare states."
A century ago, Canadians were much wealthier on average than Europeans.
"If you are earning a lot more money, simple labour-supply theory tells me you should be taking more leisure, and they did not," Huberman said.

One possible explanation is education.

"We know that societies that are more educated work longer," Huberman said. "People who first came from Northern Europe — Germany, Britain, the Scandinavian countries — were highly educated, and they are the ones who set up our institutions."
Will Canadians start working less? The past 25 years suggest not.
Between 1980 and 2000, European countries added, on average, six vacation days or statutory holidays, totalling 36 per year.

Meanwhile, according to Huberman's numbers, Canada actually dropped a day, to 24.