Eeyore wrote:

David Brown wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Fred Bloggs wrote:

Don Bowey wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6976084.stm

...Jim Thompson
" the US figure is boosted by Americans working more hours per year than
workers in most developed countries."
That's why they are MORE productive, dumb ass.
Productivity is measured as output per hour.

No it's not, it is GDP per unit of workforce pure calendar year. Go back
to your bingo.
I see 'per unit of time' here.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/productivity

Nothing about years whatever. Hours makes more sense given that wages are
commonly paid according to an hourly rate.

Graham


Look, it's quite simple - the particular definition of productivity used
for the report is the one given in the article:

"The ILO productivity figure is found by dividing a country's total
output in a year by the number of people employed."

That's no measure of productivity I'm familiar with.

The hourly rate is critically important. It's the only one I think counts for
reasons I've made clear.


The hourly rate is one of the important measurements, but it's not the
only one. The yearly rate (or anything else averaged over time) is also
important because that's important from the viewpoint of the employer.
And in this thread, it's important because that's what the article was
discussing.


Did you actually read the article, or did you just skim it until you
could find something that made the USA look slightly less good?

If you want to do some America-bashing based on this article or report,
then you are going to have to go off at a bit of a tangent - try to find
out how much of that productivity translates to dollars in the median
workers' pocket, or their disposable income, for example. Or maybe you
can get somewhere by looking at different industry sectors - perhaps the
US figures are skewed by very high productivity in the financial
services sector. But as the report stands, the title says it all.

If you like working 50+ hour weeks, fine.


If you want to argue that working 40 hour weeks with 5 weeks paid
holiday is better than working 50 hour weeks with 2 weeks holiday,
that's fine by me - just as long as you don't make incorrect claims
about the report(s) under discussion.

Graham