Since the name on the site is the HR "Capitalist", you can probably assume that I'm American, or at least a fan of any capitalist economic system that's based on merit.  If you assumed those things, you're right on both counts.  As a part of that mindset, I've long felt America is superior to the rest of the world when it comes to work ethic. 

The booming economies of China and India have shaken that broad statement a little bit, but I've always had Europe as a fallback.  The wide perception has always been that Europeans, with 35 hour work weeks and month-long vacations, value work-life balance to a great degree than we do in the US.  The flip-side/postive side of that picture for us is that we feel like we work harder.

A new study is out that shows that both views (Europe having more leisure time and the US working harder) might be a myth.  From Fortune's Geoff Colvin:

"The trouble with this narrative (America works harder than Europe) is that it's based on a myth. Recent studies show that Europeans work much harder than most people think, and some, such as the Germans, work every bit as hard as we Americans do. An analysis of why makes it tough to say that one culture is somehow wiser than the other.

The key to the research is a simple question: What's work? The statistics we usually see focus on jobs that people get paid for, and by that measure Americans do indeed toil much more than Europeans. But that measure overlooks all the cooking, cleaning, lawn mowing, and other home-based labor that most people do. We don't get paid for it, but it's just as real as other work. When we count it as well as paid employment, the whole picture changes.

A thorough study by Richard Freeman of Harvard and Ronald Schettkat of Utrecht University found that Germans and Americans labor almost exactly the same amount. (The researchers note, "While our data deal with Germany and the U.S., our findings reflect the difference between EU and American models of capitalism more broadly.") The difference is that we do more market-based work, and Germans do more home-based work.

That simple fact holds large implications. For starters, it means we're more likely to buy various goods and services that Germans are more likely to produce at home. For example, they spend more time preparing meals, while we spend more money on restaurant meals; as a society we do more of our hamburger flipping at McDonald's, while Hamburgers do more of it at home."

That sounds great, but it's not as simple as it sounds. Home-based work doesn't pay, which can have economic implications for countries as a whole.  I'll post on that next week.

For now, I'd like to welcome the Germans to the table of countries who work hard.  But what about the rest of the European Union?  Can I at least hold on to the picture of the US outworking France? 

Please?