Bone-Tired? You Need a Job in Europe

LONDON — In Europe, nothing happens in August. It is not, of course, that absolutely everyone is on holiday. There are still an unhappy few slogging in to work. But the commuter train is half empty, the flow of traffic at rush hour is uncannily smooth. Virtually no serious decision can be taken in a London office throughout this month because there is always at least one key executive on holiday.

The effect of high summer on other European cities is even more dramatic. From Bastille Day on, for instance, Paris is a Parisian-free zone.

Yet such is not the case in the United States. Having spent a week in what apparently remains the terrorists' favorite target, I can confirm that despite the sweltering heat and multiplying mosquitoes, it is still business as usual in Manhattan. The city's familiar rhythm of work is scarcely interrupted by the fact that it is summer. Only a select few take themselves off for the summer to Martha's Vineyard.

Why is this? For one thing, Americans have much shorter vacations than Europeans. While German, Italian and French workers enjoy, on average, more than 40 days of vacation a year, the average American has to make do with just two weeks.

But this is only part of a growing transatlantic disparity in patterns of work.

There are, for example, many more Europeans out of work than Americans; over the last decade, U.S. unemployment has averaged 4.6%, compared with 9.2% for the European Union.

Then there is the familiar European penchant for strikes. Between 1992 and 2001, the Spanish economy lost, on average, 271 days per thousand employees as a result of industrial action. For Denmark, Italy, Finland, Ireland and France, the figures lay between 80 and 120. The figure for the United States was just 50.

Nor should we forget what the English like to call the "sickie." It was reported last week that employees of the Royal Mail -- one in every 17 of whom call in sick on an average day -- are to be offered a novel incentive to show up. From now on, those Stakhanovite types who turn up for all their shifts for six months will be entered in a drawing to win a new Ford Focus.

In the U.S., of course, the approach is different. Workers who consistently miss work because they are feeling under the weather are given the chance to miss it on a permanent basis -- by being fired.