France Has Greater Productivity Than We Do?

I'm watching CNBC to tape a short segment my father is going to be in. Before they got to dad, they had a section on the new information that "France, with its 31-hour workweek and 6 weeks of vacation is more productive than the US."

They had 2, apparently intelligent people, giving commentary on what this means. But neither of them explained it well.

One pointed out that "Well, people who would be low productivity workers don't ever even get jobs in France, so it looks higher. But, do keep in mind that the country, as a whole, does not benefit from this high productivity because, overall, there is less work being done."

The other said, "We can learn something from France. While we have a better system overall, we can see that working a few fewer hours or taking a little more vacation can make us more productive."

They both miss the point a little bit. Productivity is measured on a per-hour basis.

Let's say John and Pierre are equally good workers. They both are most productive earlier in the day with diminishing returns as the day goes on. So what would that would look like?

hour 1 100 Units
hour 2 99 Units
hour 3 97 Units
hour 4 94 Units
hour 5 90 Units
hour 6 85 Units
hour 7 79 Units
hour 8 72 Units
hour 9 65 Units
hour 10 55 Units

So, if John works a 10-hour day, his productivity is 83.6 units/hour. If Pierre works a 6 hour day, his productivity is 91.167 units/hour, making him more productive.

But, each day John makes 836 units. Pierre only makes 565.




And that's if they are equally good workers. Even if John is a better worker, it may look like he is less productive, because of this trick of statistics.