In today’s world, many countries which have longer average working hours are likely to achieve greater economic success. However, they always have to deal with a lot of social disadvantages. From my own perspective, I totally agree with this view because of some main reasons, which I will mention in this essay.
Longer average working time can have a wide range of positive impacts on the state’s economy. In the first place, it directly leads to a significant growth in total output, especially in developing economies. In manufacturing, agriculture, and infrastructure development, the physical time invested by workers correlates heavily with the number of goods and services produced. Moreover, a hard-working workforce enhances national’s competitive advantage on the global scale. It is mainly because multinational businesses always tend to make an investment in countries whose employees are ready to work overtime to make sure about the progress and minimize operating costs. As a result, nation’s economy could be transformed rapidly and considerably.
In contrast, longer working hours on average might also bring a variety of drawbacks to the state. The first disadvantage is lower well-being quality. People have to spend almost all their time on finishing their workload without proper rest and routine, especially those whose jobs are manual labour. Individuals are likely to skip their meals and decrease their sleeping duration due to the increasing average working time. Also, too many hours spent on working can put a heavy pressure on people, which results in a significant decline in mental health. In addition, spending too much time on working prevents people from connecting with their families, friends or expanding their relationships. Consequently, society would gradually become more distant, people would see a decline in their communication skills and a weakening of their bonds with people around them.
For these aforementioned reasons, I arrive at the conclusion that longer average working hours can be beneficial for economic growth in some states, but it can lead to a huge number of social issues. Governments should encourage their resident to balance between working, resting, and connecting with others, as well as focus on quality of the work to develop economy, not how much time spent on working