GDP / (average annual labor hours * number of people working in some way)?
GDP is a pretty rough metric for efficiency, but it's among the better ones that are collected somewhat uniformly.
"average hours worked * number of people working" is an approximation of total of person-hours worked (approx. because both numbers are probably cleaned up a bit in incompatible ways)
The result would be the value a person in the country contributes to the GDP every hour (on average), which should serve as a reasonably proxy for efficiency.
The fact that Ireland leads this one is a strong hint at this also being not very useful: it's distorted by shell corporations and the likes. Ireland is the tax haven of choice for the entire EU in terms of digital services.
I also don't get it. I worked there for 8 years. I'm southern european and there was always a "half joke" about our lazyness. But we worked the hardest. My local colleagues were incredibly entitled and produced very little value.
In my opinion, Germany was at some point at the top of the world in most aspects, and the people became complacent over time. Which leads us to where we are today. Enshittification is palpable in every single aspect of society. No one cares about doing a good job anymore. Getting something done takes months where it should take days. And then that thing you got done breaks in a few weeks.
I'm sorry for the rant. I got pretty burned out of living there.
Where does this cliché come from? Germans work less than any other country on the planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...