{"id":799094,"date":"2024-11-10T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=799094"},"modified":"2024-11-12T14:10:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T12:10:35","slug":"working-hour-shock-for-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/799094\/working-hour-shock-for-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Work hour shock for South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Despite being the top economy in Africa, South African workers are largely unproductive, producing less per hour than the world average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is according to data from VC and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which examines which country’s workers produce the most GDP per hour worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ILO’s data (November 2023) charts the top-ranked countries by GDP per hour worked\u2014or labour productivity\u2014measured in International dollars (Int$).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International dollars are a hypothetical currency used to compare the purchasing power of different countries by adjusting for price differences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers in Luxembourg and Ireland are the most productive in the world, by quite some margin, earning Int$146 and Int$143 per hour, respectively – significantly higher than third place, Norway, at Int$93 per hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the top 25, Luxembourg is nearly three times more productive than Qatar (25th) due to its strong financial services sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nine of the top ten countries are in Europe, with Singapore as the exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Europeans work fewer hours than Americans to achieve similar output levels per capita. Many wealthy European countries have smaller populations and high-value industries, boosting per capita productivity,” the report noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EU\u2019s strong worker protections and generous paid time off may also enhance productivity, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa often gets a reputation for having hard workers who work some of the longest hours in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous research<\/strong><\/a> has gone some way to back this up, showing that South Africans aren’t afraid to work long hours and often go beyond the legislated maximum of 45 hours per week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the ILO’s data<\/strong><\/a> shows that South Africans don’t actually work that much longer than much of the world, averaging 42.6 hours per work\u2014not even cracking the top 50 of hardest workers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when measuring ‘excessive’ hours work (49 hours or more per week), only 17% of the working population clocks these numbers\u2014again, not even within the top 50.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only is the working population not hard-working, relative to other countries, by this metric, South Africa also emerges as being highly unproductive<\/strong>, producing only Int$21 per hour<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is below the global average of Inl$26 per hour and about seven times lower than Luxembourg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The table below outlines the top 15 countries regarding working hours, the percentage working extremely long hours (49 hours+), and the value of their work measured as GDP output per hour- and where South Africa fits in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#<\/th>Country<\/th>Average hours<\/th>Excessive hours<\/th>Productivity (Int$)<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
1<\/td>Luxembourg<\/td>35.6<\/td>6%<\/td>$146<\/td><\/tr>
2<\/td>Ireland<\/td>35.6<\/td>9%<\/td>$143<\/td><\/tr>
3<\/td>Norway<\/td>33.7<\/td>6%<\/td>$93<\/td><\/tr>
4<\/td>Netherlands<\/td>31.6<\/td>6%<\/td>$80<\/td><\/tr>
5<\/td>Denmark<\/td>33.9<\/td>6%<\/td>$78<\/td><\/tr>
6<\/td>Switzerland<\/td>35.7<\/td>9%<\/td>$76<\/td><\/tr>
7<\/td>Belgium<\/td>35.0<\/td>8%<\/td>$75<\/td><\/tr>
8<\/td>Austria<\/td>33.3<\/td>7%<\/td>$74<\/td><\/tr>
9<\/td>Singapore<\/td>42.6<\/td>n\/a<\/td>$74<\/td><\/tr>
10<\/td>Sweden<\/td>35.3<\/td>6%<\/td>$70<\/td><\/tr>
11<\/td>Guyana<\/td>44.7<\/strong><\/mark><\/td>26%<\/strong><\/mark><\/td>$70<\/td><\/tr>
12<\/td>United States<\/td>38.0<\/td>13%<\/td>$70<\/td><\/tr>
13<\/td>Finland<\/td>34.4<\/td>7%<\/td>$69<\/td><\/tr>
14<\/td>Germany<\/td>34.2<\/td>n\/a<\/td>$68<\/td><\/tr>
15<\/td>France<\/td>35.9<\/td>9%<\/td>$68<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
79<\/td>South Africa<\/td>42.6<\/td>17%<\/td>$21<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Read: Positive turn for petrol prices in South Africa \u2013 but with a big catch<\/a>Read: <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africans fancy themselves hard workers – but data from the International Labour Organisation shows this is not the case at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":212905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-799094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799094"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799474,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799094\/revisions\/799474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}