Citing Eurostat data, Wall Street Journal on Monday published an article, titled “Busting North – South Stereotypes”. It indicated that Greeks in particular, have the longest working week in Europe at an average of 42 hours, followed closely by the Spanish and Portugal with 39-hour weeks.
The euro-zone debt crisis has underlined one of Europe’s more enduring stereotypes, namely the division between the hard-working northern countries versus the lazy south. And these stereotypes have to some degree filtered into the European Union’s policy debate over how to respond to the debt crisis.
But the reality is more complicated than this. Recently bailed-out Ireland, for example, does not appear to be in southern Europe. Excluding that inconvenient fact, there are other problems with the hard-working-north-versus-lazy-south narrative.
The Greeks work on average 42 hours and according to this article have the longest work weeks in Europe. Spain and Portugal aren’t far behind with a work week of around 39 hours. But which is the shortest work week in the EU? That would be in the Netherlands, with under 31 hours a week.
Germans on average work just under 36 hours a week, significantly less than the hard-working Greeks they are now bailing out.
Your first reaction might be-here is yet another statistic that has been fudged by the Greeks. But not so, says Eurostat, which has several explanations for the numbers.
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