not sure how Forbes conducted their "study" but I agree if its about pure work hours Japan should rank pretty much on top way above the U.S. or ANY European nation. However, there is a reason Japanese workers put in so many hours. The efficiency of work in Japan is way below Western standards but this may not have been subject of this study. The tons of cigarette breaks males take during work, the long lunch breaks, the entertainment at night, the consensus culture which frowns upon individuals making decisions and suggesting new ideas is what really slows businesses down in Japan. The huge advantage Japanese companies have over others is that Japanese workers have to endure a slave-like status. Employees are afraid of fully taking even their contractual vacation, to speak up against extreme short-notice relocations, also average renumeration is extremely low by Western standards. In sum, for a Japanese white collar worker, disagreeing with the consensus or questioning decisions by superiours, no matter how valid the argumens, are a definite career killer, much more so than in any Western society. This reduces the majority of Japanese workers to brain-dead monkeys and parrots but very obedient robots which allows Japanese corporations to plan and manage very agressively. Japanese work culture is as socialist as it gets, however, without the "rights" and "entitlement" component. And I dont say that because I read something that was published 15 years ago but by having lived and worked here for many years. This is obviously my own opinion and anyone may disagree...just wanted to share my observation.
strongly disagree a) Japanese workers on average are pretty much the most inefficient among all leading industrialized nations. I would claim Americans are among the most efficient. b) It seems like a contradiction, a country that produces many innovative products and having a very efficient service industry and on the other side an increadibly average inefficient work force. The explanation I gave in my previous post: The majority are monkeys who were taught to shut up, to follow, and have never learned to think out of the box but to put in the hours. This allows companies to let a few innovative individuals to lead the R&D process and utilize the masses very efficiently to implement ideas. Offer a better explanation, this is how I came to understand what is going on in the country I have lived and worked for many years. c) Silicon valley would be exactly where it is today even if Japan did not exist. Fact is, no other advanced industry is so behind in terms of IT as Japan. There are couple niche areas such as the cell phone market, internet hardware infrastructure and the like. But Japan hugely lacks educated and skilled programmers, in fact so much, that they have to let tons of Chinese 2nd tier and 3rd tier programmers into their country to work here. When speaking about the IT industry some Japanese companies developed their edge in hardware components BUT Japan is absolutely behind the curve in regards to software development.
Unfortunately Icelanders got hit because the banking crises. It's not their gov't policies that caused it but rather the U.S. and Great Britain. More importantly, their local town pension funds were invested in U.S. mortgages that were falsely rated investment grade from Moody's. Then the sub-prime crises blew up in the U.S. which carried over into Iceland. U.S. was the corrupt party responsible for failing to show the risk of these higher yielding bonds. Iceland is also the blame for their ignorance... though no one saw this coming, not even Wall Street.
I'm not a economist, so I could easily be wrong, but its hard to believe that Japan lacks efficiency. Japan has a population of about 125 million and is continually one of the strongest economies... their workers must be productive. Look up any GDP statistics and they rank after the U.S. Are you of Chinese descent? There are long historical tensions between China and Japan that may make you more bias towards China.
The # of hours worked per week does not necessarily correlate to the output level. You would expect that the # of work hours would drop as the level of automation increases. So you would expect the developed world to get "lazier" as fields such as robotics and artificial intelligence advance.
Taking examples the WWII Japanese Kamakazi flyers and the fanatic determination to follow Emperor's order till the end............it should be no surprise that Japanese corporate culture is pretty near to what asiaprop mentioned in his two informative posts. I think only word Japanese employees know to speak is 'Haaii' meaning 'Yes', but sadly it is turns out to be 'yes' to anything right or wrong. Even today, Japanese employees work from day 1 to the retirement.........only for 1 company, so expression of extreme loyalty and obedience is natural as per the selfish human mind.
Labor productivity (output per working hour) is high in (former) West Germany -- doesn't mean the Germans put in the longest hours though. I think Germany once held (maybe still does) the record for having the most paid public holidays per year. Plus each worker gets around 15-25 days of paid vacation days per year on top of that, making them one of one of the lazier countries world wide if you look at avg. working hours per year. They could afford this luxury over the recent decades, considering they were the world's largest exporters and one of the winners in the globalization game. Productivity took a huge hit post 1990 (reunification with former communist Eastern German Republic) as democratic Germany grew by 20 million relatively unproductive capita. After trillions in transfer payments from the West and 20 years later, I believe there is still a gigantic productivity gap between the industrious southern regions like Swabians (Stuttgart) and Bavarians (Munich) and their Eastern brethren (Berlin, Leipzig etc.). IIRC the Czech Republic (without trillions in transfers) has a higher average industrial output per capita than Eastern Germany today
They must have forgotten France in that list. Every time I ask someone about his job, he just sighs looking terribly tired... They must be working like hell...