Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 405 posts

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#151

Post by ryandrake »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #88

Higher earning workers in the US work more hours than lower earning workers. "Between 1979 and 2002, the frequency of long work hours increased by 14.4 percentage points among the top quintile of wage earners, but fell by 6.7 percentage points in the lowest quintile." There are insinuations in this thread that the reason Americans work more hours is because the working poor have to work long hours to make ends meet.…

I work long hours because if I didn't there's a line of people outside the door who will.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#152

Post by jacquesm »

friendlygrammar wrote: post #135
ryandrake wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which has what to do with standard of living?

Actually, standard of living is pretty heavily tied with gdp per capita, but I'm pretty sure we are talking about which country is richer not standard of living.

Only if the GDP is spread out equally. Income in-equality is a fine way to mask poverty in spite of a huge GDP.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#153

Post by zeveb »

ajmurmann wrote: post #32

I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva -The income range in the US is so large that there are lots of people at the bottom end who have to work multiple jobs. How much does that have to do with the longer work hours, Blo…

> This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire.

Very few people retire at 20 or 40; I fail to see why in an era where people are starting to expect to live until their 80s they should stop working at 65. Is it not good for us all to have the contributions, knowledge & experience of those over 65 in the workplace?

Pension plans (public & private) were built decades ago, based on assumptions which no longer hold true; should they not be revisited?

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#154

Post by fweespeech »

vlehto wrote: post #134
ajmurmann wrote: post #32

I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva -The income range in the US is so large that there are lots of people at the bottom end who have to work multiple jobs. How much does that have to do with the longer work hours, Blo…

Here in Finland there has been recent "boom" of pensioners getting part time jobs. They get something to do and bit of extra money. There is very little stress or risk as they can always fall back on pension. The only weird thing is that this has not happened sooner, as there is very "universal basic income" -like situation going on. It probably has something to do with overall elderly health improvements. And social…

> "Pension discouraging people from working" is at least partially load of bullshit.

It discourages the people who need to be stay-at-home grandparents for health reasons from being forced to work. ;)

That is always the dog whistle with US articles.

The people who work more are being 'rewarded' and the people who don't work as hard or want to retire are 'moochers'.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#155

Post by matt4077 »

slavoingilizov wrote: post #97

In the U.S., more people over 65 are working than at any point in the past 50 years Also, more people over 65 are alive, compared to any point in the past 50 years. Inability to draw insight from data is the 2nd biggest problem of media these days (the first is the linkbait/profit/ad broken business model)

Yeah - they're talking percentages: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/-i-ll-neve...

These complaints about the supposed incompetence and/or bias of today's journalism are really getting old, but thanks for highlighting how idiotic they sometimes are.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#156

Post by vidarh »

V-2 wrote: post #28
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that doing the dollar conversion at pre- or post-Brexit prices? It's now 20% worse than it used to be. I'm not in London, but I'm seriously considering sniffing around for jobs which can be done with transatlantic remote working. Sadly that's a rare and oversubscribed option :(

Timezone issues are probably much of an impediment when it comes to remote employment (over the pond)

Depends how much of your social life is tied to the evening and how much they expect you to be reachable. I worked for a Bay Area startup for two years from London. It was tiring at times, but I got into a habit of working a bit in the morning, taking a long break early afternoon and then working again late evenings, and it worked quite well, so it's possible.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#157

Post by nathan_f77 »

sguav wrote: post #116
donretag wrote: post #74

I would love to live and work in Italy (or any other Mediterranean climate country), but there are simply no [tech] jobs. And what few software jobs there are are not interesting at all and pay very little. I value my time and I am willing to take a pay cut to live in Europe, but the jobs are not simply there. Why can there be no middle ground? For now, the plan is to work hard and retire early. Real estate price cha…

FPGA designer (and embedded sys FW) living in Italy here, must say that tech jobs are possibly some of the few jobs that you can be safe to find here! Now, if tech means webdev I have friends that struggle to pay the bills by freelancing with that, but going down the stack you find much more demand (I have personally found A LOT of demand for EE). Consider that I'm speaking from the northern part of Italy, no idea ab…

Are your freelancing friends expats, or Italian citizens?

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#158

Post by rhapsodic »

jacquesm wrote: post #139
deanCommie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed having lived and worked in all 3. Canada is the sweet spot.

If you're well educated. If you're not then you'll find yourself working much harder in Canada to stay afloat than in Europe.

I have a lot of relatives in Alberta. And it seems like the oil industry there is providing a lot of opportunity for people without college degrees to make a good living. But of course, that's just Alberta. I can't comment on the rest of the country.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#159

Post by Futurebot »

pc86 wrote: post #123
RandomName2020 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US. Not true: social mobility in US is lower than in Europe and Canada.

[Citation needed]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/the-mobility-my...

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-...

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/05...

http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil...

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-ric...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/03/there...

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#160

Post by jackcosgrove »

ryandrake wrote: post #151
jackcosgrove wrote: post #88

Higher earning workers in the US work more hours than lower earning workers. "Between 1979 and 2002, the frequency of long work hours increased by 14.4 percentage points among the top quintile of wage earners, but fell by 6.7 percentage points in the lowest quintile." There are insinuations in this thread that the reason Americans work more hours is because the working poor have to work long hours to make ends meet.…

I work long hours because if I didn't there's a line of people outside the door who will.

European unemployment rates are higher than the US unemployment rate. Is there really a line of people waiting to take your job? If you are in software the employment market in the US is pretty tight right now.
Post reply on HN