Stats on Income, Commute Time, and Vacation Days

Parade's annual "What do you make?" survey really didn't have much new news in it, but I did like the various career-related statistics they had at the end of the piece including the following:

High school graduates [hourly wages]:

• Men: $15.65
• Women: $12.34

College graduates [hourly wages]:

• Men: $28.06
• Women: $21.30

Once again, looks like we see that a college education is well worth the investment.

Time traveled to work:

• Longest average commute: New York: 31.2 minutes
• Shortest average commute: The Dakotas: 16 minutes

Ha! BTW, one of these is a city and the other is TWO STATES. Someone needs to tell Parade that. ;-)

What sort of value do you put on a shorter commute? I have a 15-minute commute myself and it's worth a ton to me (though I'd have to think about it if you'd ask me to quantify it.)

Average vacation time:

• French: 39 days
• Germans: 27 days
• English: 24 days
• Canadians: 19 days
• Americans: 14 days

Yeah, we're hard working, but we're also overworked. Man, the French have it made. Throw on all those holidays and you're probably looking at close to 50 days off a year. That's 10 work-weeks!!!! Holy cow, how do they ever get anything done over there??????

Comments

[Mike]

New York is a state too. A lot of people don't know that.

[segfault]

They don't get anything done in France. And when the workers get tired of not getting anything done, they go on strike!

[Chris]

The French might also just be a lot more productive than we are. Out of an 8 hour work day how many hours does an American actually spend working?

[Claire in CA]

I make over $25 per hour, and I sure as heck didn't waste my time in college. If more people realized that public education is just churning out worker-bees, they would think outside the box and plan their futures around an entrepeneurial pursuit (NOT AN MLM, FYI), rather than relying on a corporation for their life's (totally unappreciated) work. Wow, I sound kinda militant. Cool! :-)

[Fern]

I only have a HS degree, work for corporate America, and make $29/hr as a programmer analyst. I help analyze, design, and maintain a very complicated laboratory system for one of the largest reference laboratories in the US. I worked very hard and had to prove myself numerous times go get to were I am right now. That is something a college degree can't give you.

[Minimum Wage]

How do you plan a future around an entrepreneurial pursuit if you have no money and no available credit?

No, I'm serious, I'd like to but don't know how to make it work without money or credit.

How do they ever get anything done over there? Err..pretty sure they don't!

[Ciji]

How do you plan a future around an entrepreneurial pursuit if you have no money and no available credit?

No, I'm serious, I'd like to but don't know how to make it work without money or credit.

You have to find a business which has a low start-up cost and low overhead. A reputable network marketing business or MLM offers those things.

The key word here is 'reputable'. There are a lot of scams and very few quality. Do your research.

[Ciji]

Or, you could develop a skill that few possess. I have friends who are IT or programmers with started tooling with computers and code in their basements and now have their own companies. It doesn't take a lot of money to start a business: it just takes lots of time, energy, and development of skill.

[Patrick]

The French also only have a 35 hour workweek. There is a lot of debate going on within France and the EU as to whether or not the shorter workweek is holding up industry progress.

France also has many strict employment laws that make it extremely difficult to fire workers. This was one of the underlying (though by no means the only)reasons behind the race riots there awhile back. Many non-French youth were not able to get jobs, though they were willing to work. Many businesses would not hire them becaues it is so difficult to trim labor later - even if there is no work to be done, or if they are incompentent.

Interesting tidbit -- Many Italians take the entire month of August as vacation :)

[plonkee]

I wouldn't give up my average 24 days vacation time for anyone. How do you lot manage?

The French do indeed have interesting labour laws, and it has had the side-effect that unemployment is particularly high amongst the youth, including university graduates who cannot get permanent positions and then unskilled (often, but not always, from immigrant communities). Its a trade-off, once you get a job, you're not going to be down-sized and you get long vacations.