Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I am a bit confused by this, "South Koreans worked 2,024 hours in 2017." That does seem demanding but I am not sure how the US wouldn't be ranked higher where the minimum for full time employment is 2,080 hours a year. Can anyone clarify?



40 hours/wk with only 2 weeks combined of vacation/sick days/holidays is 2000 hours. 2080 as a minimum is kind of crazy.


2080 is the standard HR number because 52 [weeks] * 40 [hours in a week] = 2080 [hours per year]. And 40 = 5 [days of week] * 8 [hours per day] for your standard 9 to 5 job.

There's no vacation/holidays/sick leave included because those hours that you actually don't work are still paid. In other words the vacation and holiday policy is just a discount you get from your employer on the total 2080 hours per year they would have otherwise requested from you.


Demanding? 2024 hours per year is 40 hours per week with two weeks off, or 41 hours with three weeks off. On average.


Which is not a lot of vacation and way too much work.


>Which is not a lot of vacation and way too much work.

Um, the average American worker gets 10 days of vacation a year and many get far less than that.

Many many many Americans work holidays too, I just worked my 13th Thanksgiving in a row.


You're responding to someone saying "this is too much work" by saying you work holidays too (and that this is apparently normal). You've succeeded in making it seem like you work too much as well, but not in making it seem like not too much.


Can I know how you got that number? Presuming you work 37.5 hours per week which should be the minimum fulltime labor amount at 5 days times 7.5 hours per week.

2080 divided by 37.5 is about 55 weeks, while there is only 52 weeks in a year. If you count it as 40 hrs per week then it is 52 weeks but people usually don't count the extra half hour which is usually a break but that could be your number.

This is probably a better comparison to the korean number for the US: https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/12/17/heres-how-many-hours...


>Can I know how you got that number? Presuming you work 37.5 hours per week

I've never had a non-retail job with paid breaks. I work 40 hours a week, minimum, with my 30 minute lunch off the clock.


My sources based on govt handbooks, note parent poster to whom I'm replying to said minimum amount of hrs per week, which is why I put down the minimum amount:

https://my.hr.gov.nt.ca/handbooks-agreements/excluded-employ...


> 7.5 hours per [day]

How did you get that? When I was an hourly employee, my shifts were 8.5/9 hours clock-in to clock-out, to allow for a 30 minute or 1 hour lunch break.


My sources based on govt handbooks, note parent poster who I'm replying to said minimum amount of hrs per week, which is why I put down the minimum amount, I'm not looking for maximum or average but minimum because OP said minimum:

https://my.hr.gov.nt.ca/handbooks-agreements/excluded-employ...


His contract may include paid lunch breaks.


I don't know exactly where they are pulling those numbers from; but last time I checked, reports of average working hours around the world were averaged over everyone, even part-time/temporary/seasonal workers. So the average for full-time workers is much higher, and the average for part-time workers is lower. The overall average is useless for anything other than loose comparisons between countries.

As a South Korean, my impression is that full-time workers in desirable positions tend to put in around 2,500 hours per year. We recently introduced a new law that puts a hard limit (for any given pair of employer and employee) of 52 hours per week, averaged over a 3-month period. There's been a lot of pushback from businesses that either require or encourage working even more hours.


Sure, there's an easy clarification. Neither the average nor the median employed American is working 40 hours per week. The average employed American is working around 35 hours per week.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: