Based on a 2021 study, Finland is the world’s happiest country. To understand why this is, one doesn’t need to look further than its labor statistics: work-life balance is highly valued in Finland. Only 1/6th of Finland’s population works over 50 hours a week. The average Finnish person works 37 hours in a week; in the US, the average is 47 hours a week. A lot can happen in the 10 hour difference.
The terms “live to work” and “work to live” crop up every once in a while in the US when discussions of our increasingly desperate work culture becomes a topic of conversation. The general consensus seems to be that the US falls under a “live-to-work” mindset, meaning that work is prioritized over personal happiness.
Work ethic, in many cultural corners of the US, is seen as one of the most important attributes that a person can have. Often, people in the US are measured not by the quality of their personality but by how successful they are in the workplace.
In Finland, it is normal to take four weeks off of work at a time. The average paid time off (PTO) in Finland is around 30 days, while in the US it is 11 days.
Finland is in the European Union, where there is a directive called the Working Time Directive. It states that employees are entitled to four weeks of annual PTO. The United States has no laws that dictate the amount of PTO that a worker is entitled to.
Luxembourg is the richest country in the world based on GDP per capita at $128,000 (as opposed to the United States’ $78,000). The country has a staggering 37 days PTO per year written into law.
So if monstrously low PTO is not putting the US in the forefront of personal wealth, why are we still abusing our workforce?
Most of Europe, and an array of countries all over the world, create a “work to live” mindset where work is often only prioritized as an avenue to support one’s self.
In Spain, it’s not unusual to notice an entire cafe is closed because everyone is on vacation.
Many Southern Europe and Latin American countries, like Spain, Italy, The Dominican Republic, Mexico and an array of other countries, have a 2-5 hour midday break.
The “Live to Work” mentality in the US is spiraling out of control, but much of the younger population is rebelling against these norms and refusing to work for companies whose PTO is less than the international standard.
Other grievances cited in this rebellion are hostile work environments, wage stagnation, long hours, and the list goes on.
This list of grievances was one of the biggest factors in the Great Resignation, which was a movement of mass resignation from workplaces. Yet the culture of working until and through exhaustion is an ongoing problem in the United States.
The feeling of endless grind could be one of the reasons that the United States, so-called “Greatest country in the world” is fifteenth in happiness.
So the United States’ work culture is not making all of its citizens rich, nor is it making all of its citizens happy. The question remains: why does the United States have such a disastrous relationship with labor?
Corporations in the US are nearing all powerful.
US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse warned of this relationship between government and corporations in his book, “Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy”: “corporations of vast wealth and remorseless staying power have moved into our politics to seize for themselves advantages that can be seized only by control over government.”
What sounds like a tin-foil hat conspiracy theory is simply a fact of the current government structure. Lobbying by corporations has real and identifiable effects. An article on corporate lobbying says that “companies now donate to help elect candidates they hope will do their industry’s bidding or support a specific cause.”
This dubious connection between government and corporation is just one example about how large companies are put above the individuals.
Individual workers aren’t funding campaigns, corporations are.
Is it a coincidence that so many US laws protect and aid large companies?
Without laws dictating paid time off, taking vacation days is often seen as selfish, lazy, or as demonstrating a lack of commitment to their ‘team’. Even with an average of a nauseating 11 days off per year, many Americans aren’t using all of these days.
A study by Zippia discovered that 55% of American employees don’t use all of their PTO, despite the fact that much of the population is working without break for most of the year.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of “Dying for a Paycheck, ”a book detailing the harm of grind culture, wrote:
“Workplace environments in the United States may be responsible for 120,000 excess deaths per year.”
The “live to work” culture of the United States seems to quite literally be killing us.
Somehow it isn’t surprising that spending your entire life living and breathing work has detrimental effects on health outcomes.
The “live to work” culture is a bleak reality that spells out much of life for the American worker. With more working hours per week, more working days per year, less average salary than countries with more time off, and less happiness indicators, along with literally working ourselves to death, it seems that the grind culture is for nothing. But the American machine keeps trudging on, corporation lobbying at the forefront of this sad parade.
Perhaps the United States can follow in Europe’s footsteps and take a vacation, for once.
