It is revealed that Korean workers face worse wage payment with highly-intensive and longest working hours. They work the longest hours among OECD member countries, but their annual wage barely tops 60% of the average of OECD countries. According to ¡®2008 Economic Outlook¡¯ of OECD which is made public on July 20th, Korean workers (limited to businesses with more than five employees) annually worked 2,261 hours in the year of 2007. Korea marked the longest working hours out of 22 OECD countries surveyed. Annual working hours of Korean workers tend to decrease from 2,453 in 1994, 2,378 in 2003, 2,294 in 2006, etc. However, Korea is still the only country that works more than 2,000 hours per year out of all OECD member countries. When compared to other OECD countries, this level of working hours is more than that of other countries by 200 hours at least and 900 hours at maximum. Poland (1,953 hours), Slovakia (1,947 hours), Czech (1,914 hours), Iceland (1,822 hours), and Japan (1,808 hours) were classified in the group of highly-intensive working countries after Korea. Annual average aggregate wage (of full-time workers for one-year period) for Korean workers was 25,379 US dollar in 2006, that is, 64% of the average of OECD member countries¡¯ 39,743 US dollar. Switzerland is the only country that tops the threshold of 60,000 US dollar with 60,384 US dollar. Luxembourg (59,638 US dollar), Norway (56,629 US dollar), Denmark (56,598 US dollar), and Ireland (55,985 US dollar) were among the group of more than 50,000 US dollar. However, Spain (27,735 US dollar) and Greece (25,934 US dollar) failed in reaching the threshold of 30,000 US dollar and workers of Portugal (18,455 US dollar), Hungary (12,097 US dollar), Czech (11,292 US dollar), Poland (10,121 US dollar), and Slovakia (8,675 US dollar) earned less than Korean workers. Korean workers¡¯ PPP (purchasing power parity)-based annual aggregate wage, which reflects the level of commodity prices of each country, marked 32,472 US dollar, that is, 85% of the average of the OECD member countries. i mean, does that mean that koreans are more motivated to work just because they have longer work hours compared to U.S.? i need to contradict this for a school report
Other - Politics & Government - 2 Answers
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Okay so?
2 :
The Koreans are more motivated to work because the competition between the employees are greater. Unlike the U.S., there are fewer opportunities and jobs, and thus from the K-12 education, and beyond, competition is "Ivy-Level status." They are not more motivated to work because they have longer work hours, but because the socioculutral aspects make it so.
