Heard the One About Lazy French Workers?

http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/02/26/heard-the-one-about-lazy-french-workers/

So maybe those French work habits are screwing their economy. (Cody's Post colleague Howard Schneider recently recommended that France cut worker pay in order to be more like Spain, whose economy is in terrible shape.)

But does that folklore about French workers hold up? No. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (1/28/11) recently noted that worker productivity is basically the same as the United States. What's different? The French work fewer hours, likely because they have more vacation time.

The Washington Post isn't the only media outlet on this case. As Ryan Chittum wrote at CJR's Audit (2/26/13), Fortune recently posted a blog item with the headline, "Are the French Really That Lazy?" Chittum found that piece perplexing in that Fortune seemed to think so, but then cited the facts about French productivity deep into the piece: "Fortune doesn't get around to mentioning the whole French-are-as-productive-as-we-are thing until the 14th paragraph of its story about its 'unproductive labor force.'"