The lazy American?

National Review, Feb 17, 1992 by Ed Rubenstein

YOSHIO Sakurauchi (see "As Tokyo Sees Us," p. 24) said the problem with the U.S. economy is that "U.S. workers are too lazy. The want high pay without working." Although many Americans undoubtedly agree with this statement, a recent survey by the Department of Labor found that U.S. workers were significantly more productive than their foreign counterparts:

               Annual Output per Worker
                 (1990 U.S. Dollars)
         U.S.    Japan    Germany      UK     Korea
1960   $31,842   $7,676   $15,748   $17,414     NA
1970    38,526   18,242    23,841    22,573   $6,737
1980    40,600   26,038    30,684    27,179   10,773
1990    45,165   34,711    35,736    32,161   19,550

The Japanese produced an average of $34,711 worth of goods and services per worker in 1990, 23 per cent less than the $45,165 produced by American workers, and 3 per cent less than Germany's $35,736 figure. (In converting local currencies to U.S. dollars the Labor Department used the actual purchasing power of each currency rather than official exchange rates.)

Japan has steadily narrowed the productivity gap, however. Between 1960 and 1990 output per worker grew by 41.8 per cent in the U.S.; Japanese output grew by 352 per cent. This does not mean that American workers are growing increasingly "lazy." Worker productivity rises or falls with the amount and quality of tools workers have to do their jobs. Japanese firms, facing much lower tax rates on new investment than U.S. firms, increased their capital per worker at an 8 per cent annual rate during most of this period. In the U.S. the increase was less than 2 per cent per year.

If "laziness" is measured by the number of hours spent on the job rather than the amount produced, then indeed Mr. Sakurauchi has a point. Japanese office workers are notorious workaholics, putting in 500 more hours per year than their German counterparts, and 225 more hours than their American ones.

Indeed, the Japanese are working themselves to death. The Japan Times reported that in 1989 more than 1,300 claims were filed against companies in which widows asserted that their spouses were victims of karoshi, or death from overwork. Some karoshi victims worked fifty days straight and logged more than one hundred hours of overtime each month. One man commuted daily between Tokyo and Osaka (a distance of 220 miles) and was putting in 135 hours of overtime monthly. Although the Japanese government has reluctantly acknowledged the Karoshi problem, it is unlikely to be able to reverse it. A rapidly aging population, a shortage of skilled workers, and the corporate obsession with productivity have pushed overtime statistics to all-time highs.

Not all "work," however, takes place in the workplace. Painting the house, making beds, cleaning the carpet - all are examples of the productive household activity that never gets counted in GNP. A survey by University of Michigan economist F. Thomas Juster found that American men spend an average of 14 hours per week doing household chores, compared to just 3.5 hours for Japanese men. When you add this time to the time spent at the office, American men work an average of 57.8 hours per week, versus 55.5 hours for Japanese men.

American children, on the other hand, do qualify as world-class lazy. Juster found that Japanese schoolchildren spend 42 hours a week in class, compared with the Americans' 26 hours. More importantly, Japanese students put in an additional 19 hours each week studying outside the classroom, versus just 4 hours for the Americans.