Strewth! Aussies give up the grog

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/04/waus04.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/05/04/ixportal.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=89978

Australians are not the laid-back booze-swillers of popular image, but are the hardest workers in the developed world, two of their fellow countrymen claim.

Once famous for referring to Friday as Poets day (standing for P*** Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday), the average worker Down Under now clocks up 1,855 work hours a year, 20 hours ahead of Americans on 1,835 and 34 more than the Japanese on 1,821.

The figures are published in a book, How Australia Compares by a Sydney academic, Rodney Tiffen, and an economics journalist, Ross Gittens, which is forcing the country to adjust how it sees itself.

Alcohol consumption has been falling since 1980, with Australia now down to seventh place in the beer-drinking league, although, embarrassingly, it leads the world in the consumption of flavoured alcopops.

we can expect to see malignant ulcers, heart disease and coronary thrombosis overtake liver disease and renal failure as leading causes of death in Oz, I take it...

the list?

bad info (sorry)

obviously... which basically amounts to 1 big beer per day. 8^) including every woman and child, of course. scary.

German consumption was under 120l in 2003, Czech around 160l.

On closer look, it's probably not trustworthy. It's from the UPI wire, and UPI is...well, let's just say they're not exactly Reuters.

The only number I'm sure about is Germany: 117.5l in 2003

http://www.brewers.or.jp/english/consupt2.htm

Edit: very interesting paper:
http://host2.cantoscomms.com/SAB8/media/THE_BEER_MARKET.pdf

alcopops! alcopops! Have you got a WKD side mate?!

ROTFLMAO

...average hours worked per year is not an indicator of dedication to the work ethic, here. Rather it shows the relative health of the jobs market and the economies of those countries.

A forty hour work week, when employed full time year round with the standard two weeks paid vacation results in 2080 work hours a year. Compared to that benchmark, none of the countries listed above hit that level. And one can easily see that Japan whose economy has been in the toilet for some time now, is struggling with 259 under-utilized hours a year that they can't keep their work force fully employed. The U.S. is doing a little better, but still falls short by 245 hours per year, while Australia seems to have come in best, but they too fall short by some 225 hours per year. That is 10% to 12.5% short of what most workers are willing to commit to.

I don't have the numbers, but I'll bet there are numerous countries where workers put in a heck of a lot more hours per year than the standard 40 hours per week, like China for example. I'm sure they overlap the developed world workforce substantially beyond the standard 40 hour workweek and could easily capture the title of hardest workers. In fact, there may lie the problem and cause of the developed worlds sluggish no-jobs recoveries. The corporations are outsourcing to countries with not only cheaper labor forces, but where workers can be forced to work many more hours and not have to be paid overtime.

that in many European countries the standard work week is thirty-five hours, not forty, and vacation is SIX weeks, not two; those metrics may be fine for analysing employment in the US, but they're NOT a universal measure.