Is It Time For Belarusians To Relax?
- 13.05.2026, 14:47
Belarusians often hear a reproach from the authorities that they work little and badly.
Let's look at the world rankings and find the most industrious and the laziest countries to decide which of them should be imitated, writes "Belarusians and the market".
According to the portal Our World in Data (a partner of Oxford University), the country where people work the most is Sudan. Here, the average person works 2.7 thousand hours a year. In Belarus - almost 1.9 thousand hours a year, that is, to catch up with the leader, we need to work almost one and a half times harder.
At the same time, the most "lazy" country in the world is Norway. Here an average worker bothers himself for only 1.4 thousand hours a year.
But the result of hard work of a Sudanese worker is modest - for an hour of work he produces products or services for 4.7 dollars. His Belarusian colleague creates 35 dollars per hour. But in Norway, labor productivity is one of the highest in the world - one hour of work adds $130 to the country's GDP. That is, labor here is four times more efficient than in Belarus, and twice as efficient as in many developed countries of the world.
All this can be clearly seen on the graph - the vertical scale shows the number of hours worked per year, and the horizontal scale shows the return per hour of work in dollars.
Do Norwegians have superpowers or is it something else?
Indeed, studies of the Norwegian labor market often note the peculiarities of Norwegian work culture: it is characterized by a high level of trust, flat hierarchy, and a strong focus on getting things done rather than being at the workplace.
It is not customary in Norway to stay at the workplace after 16 hours, and paid vacation is usually 5 weeks. Vacation is an obligation - the employee must take it. Employers encourage employees to observe the famous "Work-Life Balance".
According to a survey of employees conducted by the OECD, only 2% of employees in Norway work overtime (compared to the OECD average of 11%).
Different economic systems
But if we take a closer look at the ranking of countries by length of work, we realize that it is probably not just the peculiar culture of the north of Europe. It is not hard to see that at the bottom of the chart - with the shortest working hours - are rich countries with a developed welfare state: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Iceland, Finland and others.
And the most industrious, i.e. those who are above all on the graph, are the poorest countries in the world: in addition to Sudan, also Congo, Jordan, Pakistan, Colombia.
Who is happier?
It is interesting that the labor rating correlates quite well with another, seemingly unrelated to it by topic, rating - happiness. It is in the socially-oriented countries of Northern Europe that the happiest people live. Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are in the top 10 of the World Happiness Report-2026 - countries where people work very little but very efficiently. Poor "working people" are at the bottom of the rating.
Belarus, unfortunately, was not included in the field of vision of the World Happiness Report researchers in 2026. In 2021, we were in 65th place - quite high compared to Africa, but very low compared to the rest of Europe.