Germans work less, but are more productive: 20-year data

By: Agence France-Presse
May 1, 2012 5:17 AM

A photo taken on February 25, 2011 shows employees of German car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) checking VW Golf cars on a production line at VW's headquarters and main manufacturing plant in Wolfsburg, northern Germany. Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, said April 26, 2012, profits raced ahead by 86 percent in the 1st quarter of 2012. AFP/John MacDougall

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BERLIN - German workers are much more productive than 20 years ago although they work fewer hours on average, new data showed Monday, a day ahead of International Labor Day.

Productivity in Europe's largest economy grew by 22.7 percent between 1991 and 2011, the federal statistics office said.

At the same time, however, the average number of hours worked per person dropped by nine percent, the Destatis office added in a statement.

Labor productivity is calculated by dividing gross domestic product by the number of people in employment.

Destatis said that when calculated by replacing the number of workers with the number of hours they worked, productivity had increased by 34.8 percent since 1991.

Wage costs increased between by 47.5 percent meanwhile, more than inflation over the 20-year span, the data showed.

Calculated on the basis of productivity, wage costs rose by a little more than 20 percent, it added.

The Berlin-based think-tank DIW pointed to better production processes in the last two decades as one of the reasons for the improvement.

"Companies have moved less productive parts of their production processes abroad," DIW's economics chief Ferdinand Fichtner said.

He also highlighted better training for workers.

Germany is among the European countries where salaries, corrected for productivity, have risen at the slowest pace in recent years, leading to criticism that the country focuses too much on the competitiveness of its export industry.

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