Americans may have the reputation of working through lunch and being chained to their BlackBerrys. But it turns out that small-business owners in the United States actually work fewer hours than their global counterparts. U.S. owners of companies with under 100 employees worked 52 hours a week on average. Business owners in the United Kingdom, Mexico, France, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, and Australia averaged 54 hours a week, according to a MasterCard survey of 4,000 small businesses around the world.
And get this: The French actually led the pack, working an average of 59 hours a week, with 6 percent of those surveyed working more than 100 hours. What happened to those 35-hour workweeks and languid lunches in cafes?
I'm not sure what the point is here. It has been noted that productivity rates are lower in France than in the US. But the information about small business owners in France doesn't contradict that, in fact it may even lend support for the idea. My question would be, what are the work hours for the employees of small businesses? If employees work less in France someone will have to take up the slack and that someone will probably be the business owner. (Not to mention the greater regulatory and bureaucratic oversight of the French economy that will demand more time to deal with when compared to the US.)
The editorial notes:
Turns out that in France more than half of small-business owners have no employees, and many are involved in businesses like farming or tourism where long hours are standard.
This brings two thoughts to mind: 1) If you compared employee-less enterprises in the USA and France, wouldn't they have the same long hours because those are "standard"? And 2) are there more employee-less small businesses in France because it is harder to make a success of it there?
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