The Value Of An Hour Of Your Work [Chart]

How many hours a week do you work? I mean, how many hours a week do you reeeeally work? I know some people who technically drive to an office for 40 hours a week, but they only actually work about 70% of the time they are there. The rest of the time they are tweeting me (yay!), talking on the phone, playing smartphone games, watching videos, etc… I know other people who say they work about 70 hours a week when it’s really more like 90 hours a week when you consider all the behind the scenes strategizing and planning they do, which many times isn’t calculated into what they would consider work time. As you can see, it’s all over the map.

Most of us know or could easily figure out the value of an hour of our work as it relates to our family or household income. However, have you ever thought of it more from a big picture perspective? According to Wikipedia, gross domestic product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and service produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country’s standard of living. So, how much does one hour of your work contribute to your country’s GDP? I remember when I wrote about Ghana’s eWasteland, and how women there will work all day long to make $2.

This infographic, put together by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), compares the value of an hour of work in many different countries and displays the information in a very interesting format. Do you think the value of an hour of your work is worth more of less than what this says?