http://www.businessinsider.com/are-the-french-the-most-productive-people-in-the-world-2009-8

That article is a bit of a brow-raiser. But I've heard before that in Western European countries they work on average 32 hours a week. In the US, 40 hours a week. And in Eastern Asia they can easily work 50 to 60 hours a week. What do the WE know that we don't? What am I missing from this almost magical statistic?

We don't know how was the average was calculated. I don't know how work-time is counted, it's possible that even though they have less work hours, they travel more. Maybe there is a very strict checking-in/out system there where you even have to check out for toilet or resting. So maybe their work hours reflect the effective work hours more, but they don't spend much less time in their work-places.

Many people say that the effective work of an engineer is at most 4 hours per day, yet they sit in their offices 8 hours a day.

or blah blah

Look close at the numbers. $36,500 per person per year across 64 million people.

If you are familiar with statistics, I'd like you to explain what it means to average out 64 million people.

How many of those are independently wealthy, or live off family wealth? How many work very few hours? How many work in industries with abusive hours? How many are rich, poor, middle class?

That article, and many like it, are incredibly misleading in how they throw around numbers. They involve combined statistics that cross millions of people across all industries and walks of life. GDP and other nationwide numbers are only marginally useful, mainly when comparing against similar marginally useful numbers for other overbroad international categories.

Then there is the issue of what it means, who was counted, and how it was counted. How the numbers are generated varies by location.

The actual hours you work per week and the actual value derived from it are unique to everyone.

For games software (and I happen to be in a position where I see lots of numbers) each individual contributor for a well-received project can easily hit $200K per year, $500+K per year for a popular title. That isn't the game developer's pay because it also goes to non-developers and to studio expenses; but per person each individual adds considerable value.

People who want to branch off and do their own thing can become independently wealthy and work less than 30 hours per week. It absolutely can be done. Read personal development sites like Steve Pavlina (who was in game development and is now a multi-millionare consultant on how smart people can get rich if they apply their brains).

Other people are less smart and end up working extremely hard, committing to 60, 70, or 80+ hour work weeks for very low wages.

The raw averages without other numbers is meaningless. Add in a bunch of outliers --- the rich families where people work 1-5 hours per week to maintain multi-million-dollar revenues, or the poor uneducated people who work 80+ hours at the minimum legal wage, those who work zero hours and bring in zero wages --- and the statistics get skewed quickly.

There are a lot of factors which don't align well between the US and other countries (especially in WE) eith regard to work, even if you assume the numbers are reliable.

The US has a longstanding cultural expectation of 40 hours per week, and that number is often the first step in determining non-wage benefits like health insurance and employer match rates for retirement accounts. Those are far more important in the US than in Western Europe, and paring back hours has a bigger consequence in the former than the latter.

Also, wealth inequality and the cultural value of wealth accumulation varies between the two. Based on my observation (that is to say, no one should accept this uncritically) people in the US put a higher priority on maximizing wealth, in the form of money or consumption, than do Western Europeans. And the "wealthy class" is perceived to be more clearly distinct from those below and harder to conspicuously and stably enter in the US vs. WE.

The average US citizen works 34.4 hours a week, not 40

When I am working, my normal work week is 60 hours a week ( I try to get on 82+ hour a week projects ), however I hardly make enough hours a year to survive. ( $21,000 USD gross last year )

@frob

I resent being called "stupid". I do not make much money due to the failing US economy ( can not find projects ), not my intelligence level. My actual pay is $28 - $60 an hour, depending on which state I happen to be in.

@frob

I resent being called "stupid". I do not make much money due to the failing US economy ( can not find projects ), not my intelligence level. My actual pay is $28 - $60 an hour, depending on which state I happen to be in.

I'm sorry if that offended.

Those were not my words, nor was that my intent.

Please reread my actual statement: "less smart and end up working extremely hard, committing to 60, 70, or 80+ hour work weeks for very low wages". This was in direct contrast to the previous statement that referred to Steve's blog "Personal Development For Smart People" where he very clearly lays out ways that creative individuals can cultivate high-yield passive revenue streams.

Also, working for $28-60 per hour is not "very low wages".

Unfortunately there are many people in the world who do not have the ability to earn higher wages (which you clearly do). The statement referred to whose only choice is to rely on a job that pays at or below the statutory minimum wage, and in order to maintain a minimum quality of life end up working an extremely high number of hours to compensate for the very low pay.

That website is bullshit frob. Might as well read lifehack or something than read that.

That website is bullshit frob. Might as well read lifehack or something than read that.

To each their own.

For many hobby game developers, this website is exactly their way of doing what he wrote. They want to develop a game that sells a bajillion copies for the next five years, netting the developer millions of dollars as they sit back and collect money from the app stores. What is that, if not developing a passive income stream?

My wife and I followed his advice to a lesser extent a few years back. I've still got a few small revenue streams (ranges from $50-$150 per month from selling software) and my wife has over $500/month in passive streams (books through Amazon). Personally I find that having around $5K after taxes is useful. It's an interesting experiment if you have the patience for it.

Taking "average" anything doesn't have too much sense (unless it's for some blurring in computer graphics).

Real example from (my) real country:

- The general director of our train transportation (it's owned by the country and so it's paid from taxes) has monthly salary $25 000 (yearly $300 000 - plus another like $50 000 - $100 000 as "bonuses" each year ... of course this guy must be former politic from leading party right now) ... I almost fallen out of my chair when I heard it.

- Most people (more than 60% that are working) doesn't have more than $500 monthly (which means $6000 yearly).

- All in all our "average" salary is more than $1000 monthly ($12000 yearly) - but most of the people (I'd bet it's even like 80% or 85% of working people in our country) doesn't ever see that much money (even most teachers in our country have smaller salary than this)

Anyway we still work for max. 40 hours a week (even for drastically low wage, like $2.5 - $5 per hour), in neighbour states (Poland, Slovakia) it's basically the same (40 hours a week is standard working time), I think that it's the same for Germany and Austria (if I remember correctly). So I wouldn't say we (e.g. Central Europe people) work way too much ~ 40 hours a week is acceptable. Even further, working more than 40 hour a week regularly is as far as I remember illegal according to our law.

Taking "average" anything doesn't have too much sense (unless it's for some blurring in computer graphics).

Real example from (my) real country:

- The general director of our train transportation (it's owned by the country and so it's paid from taxes) has monthly salary $25 000 (yearly $300 000 - plus another like $50 000 - $100 000 as "bonuses" each year ... of course this guy must be former politic from leading party right now) ... I almost fallen out of my chair when I heard it.

- Most people (more than 60% that are working) doesn't have more than $500 monthly (which means $6000 yearly).

- All in all our "average" salary is more than $1000 monthly ($12000 yearly) - but most of the people (I'd bet it's even like 80% or 85% of working people in our country) doesn't ever see that much money (even most teachers in our country have smaller salary than this)

Anyway we still work for max. 40 hours a week (even for drastically low wage, like $2.5 - $5 per hour), in neighbour states (Poland, Slovakia) it's basically the same (40 hours a week is standard working time), I think that it's the same for Germany and Austria (if I remember correctly). So I wouldn't say we (e.g. Central Europe people) work way too much ~ 40 hours a week is acceptable. Even further, working more than 40 hour a week regularly is as far as I remember illegal according to our law.

Taking an average of some collection of things is often very sensible, it's just that a lot of people don't know enough math/statistics to understand that the average (they almost always mean "mean", as in your post above) is not always the appropriate tool. Even when it is, the number alone indicates very little. If you get other information like the standard deviation you can understand more about how valuable the number is, but you still need other information to get a number that people would dub accurately representative.

For international income calculations we typically lack the context to make the mean precise or broadly applicable. The number can still be useful, but it's not necessarily a good estimator of what some random person you grab off of the street earns. There are other variables required to compare the mean national incomes of different countries directly, but it's impractical (and kind of working against the concept of statistics) to try to include them all. It's much better to recognize that anything like a mean, median, mode, or more exotic figure is not perfectly representative and to avoid placing more significance on it that it's worth.

I was showing my old boss some data that I had collected for my department and I was describing the patterns I found, represented by a simple arithmetic mean. He insisted on calling it the median, over and over again, despite the fact that it was not the median, and the standard deviation (clearly listed underneath the mean) didn't suggest that the median would be a more appropriate measure. He just heard somewhere that the mean isn't very good or that the median is better and he never let it go and never bothered to think about it again. Maddening.