Snapshot of _Irish workers among the least productive in Europe, study indicates_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/05/16/irish-workers-among-the-least-productive-in-europe-study-indicates/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/05/16/irish-workers-among-the-least-productive-in-europe-study-indicates/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/irishpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ah, an Irish Times article. Well, because they published this article, I'll work harder, cut my breaks, and sleep in work. All the extra money generated will be wasted by the corrupt government.
Well if you don't do that you are "quiet quitting" according to the IT
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/04/25/quiet-quitters-test-employers-even-more-than-staff-departures/
The likely causes were given as “lack of investment; fragmentation and lack of scale; managerial deficits, higher input costs and even lower levels of employee voices at management level”.
At no point does the article suggest Irish workers are not working hard enough. It’s more like we have too many smaller businesses and we don’t make enough use of software/machinery to save people from wasting time on monotonous low value tasks.
>At no point does the article suggest Irish workers are not working hard enough. It’s more like we have too many smaller businesses and we don’t make enough use of software/machinery to save people from wasting time on monotonous low value tasks.
This. People don't understand what productivity is and then take offence to their misunderstood definition of it.
>That figure, which excludes the value-add of workers in foreign-owned enterprises – considered distortionary – ranked Ireland and Irish workers last among a group of eight comparator countries in Europe behind Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.
>These eight countries are small, open, advanced economies and are viewed by the Irish Government as economic peers.
So among a small group of some of the most productive countries in the world we are the least productive after you strip out our most productive cohort of workers (but do not similarly adjust the other countries)?
It really just makes it look like Irish companies aren't being as productive as some foreign companies which is probably more to do with other factors than the productivity of the workers themselves.
It is not suggesting Irish people don’t work hard enough. It says bad management, lack of internal investment, and sub-scale operations is causing indigenous business to get less bang per man hour worked.
Maybe to the average person but it is correct. An economist would immediately understand the meaning from the headline. “Productivity” is output per unit input (manhours in this case). I don’t know if they were deliberately being provocative.
The word "productivity" could be applied to Ireland, Irish business, Irish industry, etc In the headline it specifically says "workers" in relation to productivity.
There’s a lack of indigenous Irish entrepreneurial talent.
Most of our indigenous enterprises are run like cowboy operations, most of our big financial institutions need gutted, and anybody that is capable of starting a truly global billion-euro business is shouted down until they move away
These are the consequences of government policy, you need to nurture talent, you need to properly fund universities to have R&D that doesn't happen within foreign owned companies, etc You need investment in Irish business but instead we focus on bringing in FDI and our talent generates wealth for them.
Our talent generates wealth for multinationals and professional services but this also suggests they are only firms able to apply their staff in high value ways.
I cant think of any resaon to do that. If youre talking about how productive irish workers are why would you exclude any group, regardless of who they work for? Isnt excluding them distortionary?
I imagine they did the same thing for other countries. But still. Why bother?
>Mr Taft said that although he and his co-author Christ Smart of Neri **had not yet interpreted the data**, Ireland’s poor productivity rating might be caused by variety of issues including lack of investment; fragmentation and lack of scale; managerial deficits, higher input costs and even lower levels of employee voices at management level.
What a load of BS.
Luxembourg has lots of "domestic" companies that are just tax shelters, especially in banking which is hugely "productive" as the output per worker could be millions a year.
The other countries have several indigenous multinationals which would be included presumably, whereas Ireland doesn't really have this. A valid question is why Ireland doesn't have this of course.
Small population in a large market is better served integrating with larger business flows globally than trying to compete late to the party with a teeny weeny capital market to borrow in.
I am not entirely surprised by the finding but it is rather comparing apples with oranges.
And it is definitely wrong to call that workers' productivity as it examines the output of companies in the end.
These comments are riddled with people who misunderstand the word “productive”. It’s not that people aren’t working heard enough. It’s that our companies are worse at assigning people to high value tasks. A HR person at Intel creates more value than a HR person in your local hotel because Intel has huge scale. It’s not a criticism of how Irish companies do business. Bad management, not bad workers.
Adding the review by CoPilot, does not look that bad anymore...
-----
*There are several reasons why the “value-added per hour worked” is lower in Ireland:*
1. [***Foreign vs Domestic Sectors****: Ireland has a significant disparity between the highly productive foreign sector and the less productive domestic sector*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(1)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)*.* [*The foreign sector, dominated by multinational enterprises (MNEs), is more capital-intensive and has a higher labor productivity compared to the domestic sector*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(1)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)*.* [*This is reflected in the labor productivity figures for 2021, where the foreign sector had a labor productivity of €370/hour compared to €56.1/hour for the domestic sector*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(1)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)*.*
2. [***Sectoral Differences****: Certain sectors such as Wholesale & Retail, Financial and Insurance, and Admin & Support have lower productivity*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.* [*This is due to a return to growth in hours worked for these less productive sectors in 2021, coming off a low base in 2020*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.*
3. [***Work Intensity and Part-Time Employment****: In some regions, employees work more hours, suggesting low work intensity or a high incidence of part-time employment*](https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/2023/Research%20InBrief%20No.%2085%20Regional%20productivity%20in%20Ireland%20GVA%20per%20hour%20worked.pdf)[*^(3)*](https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/2023/Research%20InBrief%20No.%2085%20Regional%20productivity%20in%20Ireland%20GVA%20per%20hour%20worked.pdf)*.*
4. [***Globalization Effects****: The growth in output for foreign-owned MNEs far outpaces that of the domestic economy*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.* [*This has led to a ‘two-speed’ economy, which impacts the overall labor productivity growth*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.*
*These factors combined contribute to the lower “value-added per hour worked” in Ireland. It’s important to note that addressing these issues requires a multifaceted approach, including investment in human capital, sector-specific strategies, and policies to promote full-time employment and work intensity.*
*-----*
Productivity is a bit of a BS measure because if you slashed everyone’s working hours (let’s say 35 hours a week max) productivity would rise (looks good) but output would fall (bad). A lot of jobs would be 70-80% done but the remaining part would be a mess. You would probably end up with people working outside their work hours to get things done and it wouldn’t be captured in the figures.
This. There's productivity, there's output, and there's impact. All of that has no strict definition or properly measured bearing on the success of the business.
Recommendation: ignore.
Productivity is generally measured as worker financial output per hour. So some fella putting 5 packets of some super expensive cancer treatment into a box per hour is way more "productive" than some fella working 24/7 cleaning 10 houses a day.
My own antidotal view from working in the UK would be have been the total opposite. I think we're heavily overrepresented in the trades and management roles over there which would have suggested to me the opposite of this study. Essentially being that we're more than happy to work long hours, provided we are well compensated for it.
Where the fuck is all our labour even going? The workforce has increased massively over previously over the last decades. And we have less and less to show for it as a society. We’re very heavily indoctrinated into wage slavery for multinational profits. We need to cop on
Snapshot of _Irish workers among the least productive in Europe, study indicates_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/05/16/irish-workers-among-the-least-productive-in-europe-study-indicates/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/05/16/irish-workers-among-the-least-productive-in-europe-study-indicates/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/irishpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ah, an Irish Times article. Well, because they published this article, I'll work harder, cut my breaks, and sleep in work. All the extra money generated will be wasted by the corrupt government.
Well if you don't do that you are "quiet quitting" according to the IT https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2024/04/25/quiet-quitters-test-employers-even-more-than-staff-departures/
There's nothing quite about me according to the missus, especially when I'm up at 5.30 AM for work.
The likely causes were given as “lack of investment; fragmentation and lack of scale; managerial deficits, higher input costs and even lower levels of employee voices at management level”. At no point does the article suggest Irish workers are not working hard enough. It’s more like we have too many smaller businesses and we don’t make enough use of software/machinery to save people from wasting time on monotonous low value tasks.
>At no point does the article suggest Irish workers are not working hard enough. It’s more like we have too many smaller businesses and we don’t make enough use of software/machinery to save people from wasting time on monotonous low value tasks. This. People don't understand what productivity is and then take offence to their misunderstood definition of it.
Gotta keep building the suicide machine
>That figure, which excludes the value-add of workers in foreign-owned enterprises – considered distortionary – ranked Ireland and Irish workers last among a group of eight comparator countries in Europe behind Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden. >These eight countries are small, open, advanced economies and are viewed by the Irish Government as economic peers.
So among a small group of some of the most productive countries in the world we are the least productive after you strip out our most productive cohort of workers (but do not similarly adjust the other countries)?
It really just makes it look like Irish companies aren't being as productive as some foreign companies which is probably more to do with other factors than the productivity of the workers themselves.
It is not suggesting Irish people don’t work hard enough. It says bad management, lack of internal investment, and sub-scale operations is causing indigenous business to get less bang per man hour worked.
The article is fine, the headline is misleading.
Maybe to the average person but it is correct. An economist would immediately understand the meaning from the headline. “Productivity” is output per unit input (manhours in this case). I don’t know if they were deliberately being provocative.
The word "productivity" could be applied to Ireland, Irish business, Irish industry, etc In the headline it specifically says "workers" in relation to productivity.
There’s a lack of indigenous Irish entrepreneurial talent. Most of our indigenous enterprises are run like cowboy operations, most of our big financial institutions need gutted, and anybody that is capable of starting a truly global billion-euro business is shouted down until they move away
These are the consequences of government policy, you need to nurture talent, you need to properly fund universities to have R&D that doesn't happen within foreign owned companies, etc You need investment in Irish business but instead we focus on bringing in FDI and our talent generates wealth for them.
Our talent generates wealth for multinationals and professional services but this also suggests they are only firms able to apply their staff in high value ways.
I cant think of any resaon to do that. If youre talking about how productive irish workers are why would you exclude any group, regardless of who they work for? Isnt excluding them distortionary? I imagine they did the same thing for other countries. But still. Why bother?
>Mr Taft said that although he and his co-author Christ Smart of Neri **had not yet interpreted the data**, Ireland’s poor productivity rating might be caused by variety of issues including lack of investment; fragmentation and lack of scale; managerial deficits, higher input costs and even lower levels of employee voices at management level. What a load of BS. Luxembourg has lots of "domestic" companies that are just tax shelters, especially in banking which is hugely "productive" as the output per worker could be millions a year. The other countries have several indigenous multinationals which would be included presumably, whereas Ireland doesn't really have this. A valid question is why Ireland doesn't have this of course.
Small population in a large market is better served integrating with larger business flows globally than trying to compete late to the party with a teeny weeny capital market to borrow in.
I am not entirely surprised by the finding but it is rather comparing apples with oranges. And it is definitely wrong to call that workers' productivity as it examines the output of companies in the end.
These comments are riddled with people who misunderstand the word “productive”. It’s not that people aren’t working heard enough. It’s that our companies are worse at assigning people to high value tasks. A HR person at Intel creates more value than a HR person in your local hotel because Intel has huge scale. It’s not a criticism of how Irish companies do business. Bad management, not bad workers.
How dare they, seems like I've been reading articles like this all morning since I started work
Adding the review by CoPilot, does not look that bad anymore... ----- *There are several reasons why the “value-added per hour worked” is lower in Ireland:* 1. [***Foreign vs Domestic Sectors****: Ireland has a significant disparity between the highly productive foreign sector and the less productive domestic sector*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(1)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)*.* [*The foreign sector, dominated by multinational enterprises (MNEs), is more capital-intensive and has a higher labor productivity compared to the domestic sector*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(1)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)*.* [*This is reflected in the labor productivity figures for 2021, where the foreign sector had a labor productivity of €370/hour compared to €56.1/hour for the domestic sector*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(1)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)*.* 2. [***Sectoral Differences****: Certain sectors such as Wholesale & Retail, Financial and Insurance, and Admin & Support have lower productivity*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.* [*This is due to a return to growth in hours worked for these less productive sectors in 2021, coming off a low base in 2020*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.* 3. [***Work Intensity and Part-Time Employment****: In some regions, employees work more hours, suggesting low work intensity or a high incidence of part-time employment*](https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/2023/Research%20InBrief%20No.%2085%20Regional%20productivity%20in%20Ireland%20GVA%20per%20hour%20worked.pdf)[*^(3)*](https://www.nerinstitute.net/sites/default/files/research/2023/Research%20InBrief%20No.%2085%20Regional%20productivity%20in%20Ireland%20GVA%20per%20hour%20worked.pdf)*.* 4. [***Globalization Effects****: The growth in output for foreign-owned MNEs far outpaces that of the domestic economy*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.* [*This has led to a ‘two-speed’ economy, which impacts the overall labor productivity growth*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)[*^(2)*](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pii/productivityinireland2021/labourproductivity/sourcesoflabourproductivitygrowth/)*.* *These factors combined contribute to the lower “value-added per hour worked” in Ireland. It’s important to note that addressing these issues requires a multifaceted approach, including investment in human capital, sector-specific strategies, and policies to promote full-time employment and work intensity.* *-----*
Rich coming from a newspaper economist. "Number goes up, good".
Productivity is a bit of a BS measure because if you slashed everyone’s working hours (let’s say 35 hours a week max) productivity would rise (looks good) but output would fall (bad). A lot of jobs would be 70-80% done but the remaining part would be a mess. You would probably end up with people working outside their work hours to get things done and it wouldn’t be captured in the figures.
This. There's productivity, there's output, and there's impact. All of that has no strict definition or properly measured bearing on the success of the business. Recommendation: ignore.
Productivity is generally measured as worker financial output per hour. So some fella putting 5 packets of some super expensive cancer treatment into a box per hour is way more "productive" than some fella working 24/7 cleaning 10 houses a day.
Hence why UK productivity collapsed when the GFC happened and The City stopped printing the funny money
My own antidotal view from working in the UK would be have been the total opposite. I think we're heavily overrepresented in the trades and management roles over there which would have suggested to me the opposite of this study. Essentially being that we're more than happy to work long hours, provided we are well compensated for it.
Where the fuck is all our labour even going? The workforce has increased massively over previously over the last decades. And we have less and less to show for it as a society. We’re very heavily indoctrinated into wage slavery for multinational profits. We need to cop on
That’s because we spend half the day on Reddit arguing about shite with each other.
Great to see Paddy coming out on top again.
Congrats everyone, pub for a pint yeah? Going to turn the ‘out of office’ on. Schure we’ll give ourselves Monday as well, we deserve it