So do we benefit at all from working so much more than our developed peers? Left-leaning economists think not. TIME investigated the issue last year, quoting CEPR economist Jason Schmitt who argued the macroeconomic effect of mandatory paid time off is “actually pretty small,” and that ”It’s very hard to say that those policies are connected to any kind of a reduction in economic performance.”
But does this make sense? If employers are required to give a worker a lot of time off, that worker is going to produce less. All else equal, this will make the worker less valuable to an employer, and lower his pay. In this time of over-indebtedness, both among citizens and the government, it hardly makes sense to enact restrictions on how much people are allowed to work, as it’s only through work that we’ll lower these debts.
That being said, there is evidence that countries that have higher paid time off requirements actually work more efficiently than workers in America do. Take Belgium for example, which requires a whopping 30 days of paid time off. Though Belgium’s output per person was just 71% of America’s in 2012, its output per hour worked was 100.5% of America’s. In other words, when Belgian workers are on the job, they’re slightly more efficient than Americans. Then again, Belgium consistently has a higher unemployment rate than the U.S., which may mean that its least efficient workers simply can’t find a job at all.