The Country Where People Work the Most Hours

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The Country Where People Work the Most Hours

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In America, the average number of hours people work per week is 40, or at least that is what most people assume. In reality, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), that number is slightly less than 34. This is near the 33-hour OECD average. The county where people work the most is Mexico, at just below 41 hours per week. (Here are the industries laying off the most workers.)
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According to Zippia, Mexico also has the most people who work over 50 hours per week. This is 27% of the nation’s workforce.
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Mexico also has the lowest GDP per worker, which is a mystery. The only probable reason is that Mexico has a relatively low gross domestic product and a huge workforce.

With 130 million people, Mexico ranks 10th among all nations when measured by that yardstick. Based on GDP, the country ranks 13 worldwide at $2.4 trillion. However, GDP per capita ranks 90th in the world at just above $19,000.
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A fairly large part of the population, 13%, works in agriculture. In the United States, that figure is under 1%. Agricultural jobs tend to pay poorly there, compared to jobs in services and industry. People in Mexico work hard to maintain an even modest standard of living.
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One possible reason Mexicans work so many hours is the number of hours they work without pay. According to News Taco, “The main reason Mexicans spend so much time working is that they do so much unpaid work, more than four hours each day, the highest of all the countries evaluated by the O.E.C.D. Most of that work is housework, especially cooking.”

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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