Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo
I found out today that Japan only ranked 18th for GDP (PPP) per capita per hour. In other words, Japanese work too long hours compared to what they earn, which is not surprising. What is interesting is that France ranks 3rd, although its GDP per capita is slightly lower than Japan's. This means that French people work much shorter, but earn over 50% more than the Japanese for the same time spent at work.
This is very interesting.

Actually I understand that many in Japan do not even register some of their overtime. People do not register some of the overtime either because they feel under pressuere not to do so or because they feel embarrased that they need so long time to do their job. So maybe the japanese actually work more hours than the figure which have been used for this calculation.

I think that the fact that working overtime is so common among "salary men" is a very significant problem leading to low productivity. Nobody is as efficient when working the 12th hour as compared to the 1st or even the 8th hour. I order to get more value for each hour worked, I think that women in general need to work more and men less.