WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- Perhaps the worst is over for the U.S. economy, but Americans have had to work harder to keep the country's economic engine revving, according to the International Labor Organization's latest report on productivity levels across the globe. They also have less job security and could be unemployed for longer than in other wealthy nations.
According to the Geneva-based organization's Key Indicators of the Labor Market released Labor Day Monday, U.S. workers put in an average of 1,825 hours in 2002, compared to between 1,300 and 1,800 in leading European nations. The Japanese, meanwhile, worked about the same length of time as did the U.S. employees.
In fact, so high was the number of hours put in as well as output by U.S. workers that productivity in the United States surpassed both the European Union and Japan in terms of annual output per worker for the first time since World War II. U.S. productivity gains in turn have widened they productivity gap with the rest of the world.
Some economists, including Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, argue that productivity gains was not only a key driving factor for the boom days of the late 1990s, but also remains a pillar for sustained growth in the years ahead. Greenspan has also repeatedly stated that it was productivity gains that gave the United States a competitive edge against other industrialized countries.
But those gains and the ensuing competitiveness have come at a price for everyman, namely more hours worked. It is, however, clear that productivity has increased markedly, with output per person in the United States growing 2.8 percent in 2002 from the previous year, with an average growth of 2.2 percent for the past seven years. That's nearly double the growth rate of 1.2 percent in the European Union and 1.1 percent in Japan during the same period.
Granted, part of the reason for the productivity gain in the United States was not merely hours worked, but also the advancement of information technology, coupled with the growth of services such as retail trade and financial securities, according to the ILO.
Still, Americans are not the hardest-working in the world, the report found. That title was reserved for the citizens of South Korean, who on average worked 2,447 hours in 2001, the longest hours worked of all countries surveyed. That's 26 percent longer than the average U.S. worker, and 46 percent more than in the Netherlands, which clocked in the least hours.
"In all developing Asian economies where data were available, people historically worked more than in industrialized economies. This is a typical sign for developing economies as they often compensate for the lack of technology and capital with people working longer hours," the ILO stated.
On the other hand, the agency found that in Africa and Latin America, total economic productivity has continued to decline since 1980.
Of course, while employers are most concerned about output per worker, job prospects remain the more important issue for wage earners. Unemployment in the European Union has been declining, with Ireland having had the highest jobless rate in Europe in the early 1990s, now boasts a smaller rate of unemployment than the United States. Meanwhile, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Britain, and Sweden all have lower jobless rates than the United States.
The United States has seen an increase in both the youth unemployment rate and long-term joblessness since 1999, even though both rates have declined in a large number of other industrialized economies, the ILO said.
