OECD results - WORK & LEISURE

WORK Vs. LEISURE

Unsurprisingly, the figures released by the OECD in their annual report confirm that the French work basically not only less than the Americans but also less than the average OECD countries.

As a result they have more leisure. (Here "leisure" is simply understood as the amount of time that is not spend in paid work.)

The lowest level of leisure is found in the United States (followed by Hungary, Poland, and the Slovak Republic), while the highest is in Norway.

The highest amounts of leisure are found in the Nordic countries and western continental Europe: the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and France.

	Annual hours of work	Annual residual leisure (hours)	Average weekly hours on all jobs	Annual weeks worked (hours)	Holidays and vacation weeks
France	1459	7301	37.3	39.1	7.0
USA	1896	6864	41.3	45.9	3.8
OECD average	1595	7165	38.2	41.6	6.5

It must be noted that the US is the only country in the group that does not legally require employers to provide any paid annual leave who do so on the basis of collective and/or individual agreements.

FREE TIME and LEISURE TIME

Then more interestingly the OECD broke down the time not spent in paid work into several categories :

“Unpaid work” = all household work (chores, cooking, cleaning, caring for children and other family and non-family members, volunteering, shopping, etc.).

“Personal care” = sleep, eating and drinking, and other household, medical, and personal services (hygiene, grooming, visits to the doctor, hairdresser etc.).

“Leisure” = hobbies, games, television viewing, computer use, recreational gardening, sports, socialising with friends and family, attending events, and so on.

“Other time” = all activities not elsewhere mentioned.

This is interesting because with this narrow definition of "leisure", Americans actually spend more time a day on leisure than the French :

Share of time taken by leisure and other activities across an average day. 24-hour breakdown of time spent in main activities for all respondents aged 15 and over in 18 OECD countries :

	Paid work or study	household work	Personal care	Leisure	Unspecified
France	14.9	14.9	49.2	18.4	2.5
USA	17.0	14.8	45.0	21.5	1.5
OECD average	16.5	15.3	45.3	21.6	1.4

If France has comparatively a low level of leisure (along with Japan and New Zealand), it's because they spend more of their free time for PERSONAL CARE.

Who does this personal care consists of? :

SLEEP : Most of the personal care is actually spent sleeping - and the French sleep the longest (an average of 8.5 a night - which I find surprising as I personally know very few people who sleep so much!), second to the Americans. Ironically, only 64% of the French feel less rested - less than the OECD average (67%) or the Americans (67%). Is it because a lot of them take sleeping pill? (France is one of the biggest consumers of sleeping pills - here and here)

EATING AND DRINKING : as expected the French spend the most time eating and drinking (over 2 hrs a day), almost twice as much the Americans (1h14').
The OECD also notes that United States is one of the countries where relatively little time is spent eating as a primary activity and where obesity rates is the highest in the OECD ( at 34%).

COOKING : Americans also spend little time cooking (30' a day) but against all odds the French spend less time cooking (48') than the OECD average (52')

SHOPPING: Even more unexpectedly from a country with so much anti-capitalist rhetoric (including an Anti-Captalist Party) the French are the top shoppers (32' a day), even more than the Americans (28') - both above OECD average (23'). (TheFrench are close to the Germans and the Canadians.).
Something to keep in mind next time a French person tells you about 'evil capitalism'.

Finally, in most countries - expect for New-Zealand, Norway and Sweden - women have less leisure time than men.And the gender gap in favor of men is higher in France (280 hrs a year) than in the US (128 hrs) but much less so than in Italy (444 hrs). Some habits die hard!