There’s a well-known stylized fact wherein GDP per capita in the United States is higher than in the many Western European economies but GDP per hour worked is higher in Europe. But Reihan Salam notes that this now seems to have changed.
He sort of deploys this to a polemical end, but what’s happening basically is that America now has higher unemployment than France, Germany, etc. for the first time in a while. But during the course of the recession, American productivity has surged and European productivity has tended to slump. So suddenly we’re the ones who are highly productive when working who don’t actually work that much.
Of course with hours worked distribution matters a lot. There’s a big difference between 1,000 people each working 1,800 hours a year and 900 people each working 2,000 hours a year while the other 100 are unemployed. The traditional US-European dynamic involved both a “more vacation” element and a “more unemployment” one.
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