Comparaisons internationales des durées du travail

Macro-economic international comparisons of labour productivity raise many methodological problems, among which the lack of homogeneity in the measure of the number of hours worked. An assessment of the accuracy of working time series commonly used is proposed for eight OECD countries (United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands). Analysing methods and available sources allows to identify a great part of the problems encountered. Estimates of annual hours worked and of hourly productivity based on common sources and concepts are proposed. The estimates lead in some cases to substantial revisions of the level of working times. The confrontation with national working time regulations confirms the results. The main advantage of this methodology is to propose homogenous international comparisons of the annual average hours worked per worker.