Substance over form is one of my favorite saying and means quite a lot for me. It is an expression and a concept in accounting, used it in my dissertation years ago, and keep using it in life as it's crucial in my opinion.
Last week I saw an article title that made me smile instantly. Not because it was funny, but because the second I saw the title, knew they want to spin a story in a certain direction by choosing those words, but reading the article convinced me it was just a clickbait title and the writer was correct in what was written in the article.
The title of the article was Who works the hardest in Europe? The countries with the longest and shortest working weeks. It's an interesting topic and important too, if it is taken seriously and affects almost everyone, from the youngest citizen to the oldest, as a lot depends on how long the working hours are, but even more depends on something else.
According to the article, the average working hours in the European Union is 35.9 hours per week. The data refers to full-time and part-time workers aged 20 to 64 in their main job. 5 days with 8 working hours per day means 40 hours, so this average is below that level, which is good news for the workers, but you can't just enjoy the average, as there's more to it.
Working long hours and working hard is not necessarily mean the same thing, anyone with half a brain knows that and I could give you several examples. The best example in my country is the public sector, and I'm pretty sure many European countries are in the same situation, especially Eastern European countries.
Working hours alone mean nothing, it's a metrics that matters, but as standalone metrics, it only tells you how many hours people were paid for, which again, doesn't necessarily mean how much these people worked. Yes, that doesn't even mean they were at work, just that they were paid for those hours. Working hours compared to efficiency, economic results, development, poverty rate and so on, may mean more, but the article says nothing about that, as it requires a deep and thorough analysis.
Within the EU, actual weekly working hours range from 31.9 hours in the Netherlands to 39.6 hours in Greece. When EU candidate countries and EFTA members are included, the figure rises to 42.4 hours in Turkey. Two other candidate countries closely follow: Bosnia and Herzegovina (40.9 hours) and Serbia (40.6 hours).
This is the top of the list and anyone who has a bit of knowledge about the economic situation of most European countries can see that working long hours does not automatically mean prosperity and wealth.
Turkey made top of the list with 42.4 hours, followed by Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Greece and North Macedonia. Apart from Greece, the rest of the countries are not EU members and you can guess why. These countries don't meet the criteria to be part of the Union and most likely the road to join is longer than it seems.
The economic situation in Turkey is disastrous and when I am saying this, I am being really generous.Turkey's annual inflation rate is at 32.6% as of May this year, just to give you an example. The political situation is far from ideal and as long as Erdoğan and his gang is ruling, you can't expect a democratic evolution.
Greece is an EU member, but we all know the Greek economy has been on the brink of collapse for years, the have been saved by different financial institutions year after year and things are not exactly rosy now either.
Making the bottom of the list in this case is the best thing it can happen to your country, but we all know things don't just happen, you have to make them happen and work hard to get where the bottom three countries are.
When you wait four weeks for a document, that needs 3 signatures from 3 different people, just to make them important, you know things could be organized better, so you can get that goddamn doc in 5 minutes and move on with your life. This means funds allocated to a better IT system, but also means firing some useless people in the public sector who are paid to spend their day in an obsolete system that eats up money without being efficient.
Overworking and underpaying people can have serious consequences and a burden on the health system, as well as lowering life expectancy.
According to this source life expectancy in Europe is estimated at 81.7 years in 2024 and if you look at the list, the countries that make the top of the list regarding working hours, are not doing so well in this list.
If you look at GDP per capita in Europe in 2024, it also confirms that working long hours alone won't bring you prosperity. This is an important metrics, but again, the absolute number alone is not enough and only tells you so much. You need to take into consideration how wealth is divided and how many live under subsistence level.
Standard of living depends on quite a lot of things and some countries are trending to the downside in this regard, unfortunately.
I could go on and on for hours about this, but I hope you get what I mean and also hope people don't just take everything at face value and use their brain to judge what's accurate and what is not.
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