Economic crises bring forth a great deal of nonsense. One of the most frequent bits of such nonsense is the idea that the countries in crisis in the eurozone are full of idle people, while the countries that are not in crisis are full of hard-working ones.
This, it so happens, is the reverse of the truth. Indeed, if one went by the hours worked on average by each worker, one would conclude that the fewer hours people work, the less crisis-prone will be the country.
Here is a relevant chart for the eurozone, which comes from the Conference Board database I have frequently used.
Martin Wolf, “Fallacies about work and the crisis“, Martin Wolf’s Exchange, 24 July 2012.
