The World’s Most Productive Countries

Increasing productivity in the workplace can be tricky and, as a business owner, you may need to use a variety of methods from reduced number of meetings to optimising performance via free CRM systems to achieve an uptick.

According to our data deep-dive, the most productive country is Luxembourg.
productivity of whole countries can vary as much as that of individuals. Studying the performance of these countries can give you excellent ideas on how to increase the productivity of your staff.

In this article, we share our top 30 rankings of the world’s most productive countries, backed by our calculations, which we explain below. In our analysis, we discuss our findings and explain which factors may have played a part in the successes of some countries and the underperformance of others.

The World’s Most Productive Countries: Ranked

How Did We Calculate A Country’s Productivity?

We gathered the latest information from the OECD and World Data Bank, dividing each country’s annual GDP by its annual working hours.

We then ranked the top 30 countries by their productivity per person – the result of the division we mentioned. This allowed us to find out which countries had the most effective financial return while spending the least amount of time in the office.

For our ranking, it’s worth noting we only considered countries where we had access to both the annual GDP and annual working hours. This meant leaving out some of the World Data Bank top GDP earners, such as Singapore, as we lacked updated working hours information on them.

Working hours data varies substantially by data set, so we have decided not to mix OECD data with any other sources, including the ILO.

Why Are Some Countries More Productive?

From our productivity by country ranking, it’s clear that some nations are creating more wealth from their working hours than hours.

The question is: why is that the case? Let’s dig into a few of the top performers to see what working conditions are like, and if there are any correlations between them.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg continues to lead the way in productivity per person in 2024 – just as it did in the previous year – demonstrating that small size does not hinder economic performance.

Each worker in Luxembourg generated almost $20 more per hour than their closest competitor, Ireland, this year.

Some factors contributing to this high productivity include the country’s standard 40-hour workweek, a thriving financial sector, at least five weeks of paid annual leave per employee, and prohibition on Sunday employment.

Ireland

Taking the Silver medal in our study, among the countries listed, is Ireland.

With a workweek that typically does not exceed 40 hours per employee, Ireland has a high presence of multinational corporations that significantly enhance its labour productivity. Consequently, its GDP per capita has grown rapidly compared to other Western European nations.

Scandinavian Countries

Northern Europe features prominently at the top of our rankings – with the United States (sitting in 10th) being the only country not located in this region – but Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, are particularly high on the list.

These nations share a common approach of maintaining a workweek shorter than 40 hours, which contributes to better work-life balance and higher employee satisfaction.

This positive balance is a key factor in their high scores on both the Happiness Index and the Quality of Life Scale (QOLS).

An ongoing study from the OECD shows that Finland, Norway, and Denmark rank exceptionally high in life satisfaction, all scoring above 7.3/10 for QOLS.

Finland is of particular note, with the highest score of all, while Denmark sits in third and Norway ninth respectively. By contrast, the UK scores a middling rank of 19th from the 41 surveyed countries, with a score of 6.8/10.

It’s worth noting that, in general, there’s a high correlation between our ranking and the QOLS ranking; alongside the Scandi nations, Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden and Germany all feature in the top ten positions for both rankings. This suggests improving employee satisfaction is a great way of spurring productivity.

The World’s Least Productive Countries

Bringing up the rear are four countries that work extremely long hours, and narrowly missed out on our top thirty rankings: Greece, Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

According to our research, Mexico worked the most hours in 2023 (2,207 hours), which is almost double the lowest figure of 1,343 hours achieved by Germany.

For its part, Costa Rica put in a lot of man hours as well in 2023 (2,171 hours), followed by Chile (1,953 hours), Greece (1,897 hours), Israel (1,880 hours) and South Korea (1,872 hours).

When discussing the most productive countries, we talk about work-life balance. In this scenario, it’s all work and no play. Employees living in the least productive countries are likely to be overworked and tired, which could see overall productivity take a dip.

In these four countries, employees are generally expected to work longer hours than their European counterparts. In Mexico, this is down to differing cultural attitudes and socio-economic factors. For instance, there are lax labour laws and some fears about unemployment, which means the maximum 48-hour limit is hardly ever imposed on working weeks.

UK Case Study: The Underachieving Kingdom?

Milling around in mid-table obscurity, the United Kingdom is the 14th most productive country in our ranking. Unsurprisingly, its average position comes down to its decidedly average statistics in productivity per person and annual GDP per capita.

The UK worked the 11th least amount of hours per person in 2023 and produced $38.65 in productivity per person.

While that’s an increase in productivity compared to last year’s statistics ($35.64), this year’s figure is around $35 less per person than Norway, which worked a similar number of hours, and a paltry $5 more than Canada and Italy, which worked an extra 341 and 210 hours in 2023 respectively.

What’s Behind the Slow-down in British Productivity?

With the UK’s productivity levels failing to match pre-2008 rates, it begs the question: what gives?

Weak Investment

Researchers Alayande and Coyle of The Productivity Institute highlight that weak investment across industries, especially notable in manufacturing, finance and insurance, and business services, could be to blame.

Austerity measures, in place in the UK from 2010 onwards, have particularly contributed to massively weakened public investment, according to the Resolution Foundation.

This underinvestment is thought to extend to the training and development of employees. A lack of investment in high-level skilled industries has seen employers become similarly hesitant to spend on upskilling employees, creating a vicious circle of stagnant investment.

This highlights the value of investing in your business to jump-start operations and improve the productivity of your workforce through greater education and training plus spending on business optimisation tools, such as CRM software, integration of various tools with one another including VoIP communications, and many other ways of boosting staff productivity.

Longer, Unproductive Office Hours vs Shorter, Flexible Schedules

Methods of boosting productivity can extend to working fewer hours or more flexible working schemes (such as hybrid or fully remote working) to earn performance boosts from well-rested and happier employees.

For instance, February 2024 marked one year since the end of the UK’s 2022 four-day work-week trail, with a huge 89% of companies still operating with the policy in place.

Of employees surveyed, 86% felt they performed better at work as a result, while 38% felt their organisation had become more efficient. Plus, nearly all staff (96%) said their personal life had benefited from the change.

It appears increasingly that UK businesses have realised that promoting long working hours, for the sake of doing so, is an approach that can be detrimental to productivity.

Instead prioritising mental and physical wellbeing through flexible working schedules can help both businesses and employees alike.

Conclusion

The data we analysed suggests a link between employee satisfaction and productivity. Countries with high standards of living and a work-life balance take the top spots in our ranking – such as Luxembourg and Norway.

According to our calculations, the countries that performed poorly – like Mexico – prove that long hours and few paid holiday days don’t tend to translate into productivity.

Overall, the picture these numbers paint is that overwork plays a detrimental part in creating a productive workforce.

With this breakdown, you’re better equipped to develop your business’ internal policies to help bolster the productivity of your staff. As for us at Expert Market, we’ll continue to update these numbers and keep you informed of the latest workplace trends.