You think you work a lot of hours? Let’s take a look.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development headquartered in Paris, here’s some stats on the average amount of hours worked.
If one works a 40 hour week, 52 weeks per year, that comes out to 2080 hours per year. Surprisingly, most don’t work that many hours.
The OECD average is 1770 hours per year, or an average of 34.03 hours per week.
Where does the US fall in this? The US comes in 17th place among the member countries, with average work hours per year at 1789. It could be worse – number 1 on the list is Mexico, with a yearly average of 2228 hours per year.
The least number of hours? That would be Germany at 1371 hours per year. The Netherlands is the next lowest at 1425 hours. The UK comes in at 25th scoring 1677 hours per year.
For the US, in 2006, the average man employed full-time worked 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time worked 7.7 hours per work day. There is no mandatory minimum amount of paid time off for sickness or holiday. However, regular full-time workers often have the opportunity to take about nine days off for various holidays, two weeks (10 business days) of sick leave and two weeks (10 business days) of paid holiday time, with some workers receiving additional time after several years. The majority of jobs in America do not offer paid time off. Because of the pressure of working, time is increasingly viewed as a commodity.
Many professional workers put in longer hours than the forty-hour standard. In professional industries like investment banking and large law firms, a forty-hour workweek is considered inadequate and may result in job loss or failure to be promoted.
Workweek policies are not uniform in the U.S. Many compensation arrangements are legal, and three of the most common are wage, commission, and salary payment schemes. Wage earners are compensated on a per-hour basis, whereas salaried workers are compensated on a per-week or per-job basis, and commission workers get paid according to how much they produce or sell.
Under most circumstances, wage earners and lower-level employees may be legally required by an employer to work more than forty hours in a week; however, they are paid extra for the additional work. Many salaried workers and commission-paid sales staff are not covered by overtime laws. These are generally called "exempt" positions, because they are exempt from federal and state laws that mandate extra pay for extra time worked. The rules are complex, but generally exempt workers are executives, professionals, or sales staff. For example, school teachers are not paid extra for working extra hours. Business owners and independent contractors are considered self-employed, and none of these laws apply to them.
Generally, workers are paid time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times the worker's base wage, for each hour of work past forty, unless they are in “exempt” positions.
Now that I’ve given you these depressing facts, cheer up! It’s the weekend!
<3 Brock V"""V
No comments:
Post a Comment