During the usual lull in activity between Christmas and the (Lunar) New Year, some thoughts about actual hours worked, growth, and general financial industry biases.

Hong Kong is supposed to be a hive of activity right now. During an empty-handed festive season, restaurant and bar owners seemed to ache for a sign of a sustainable post-pandemic recovery.

Many talked themselves into believing that the city’s travel-starved, restriction-battered inhabitants would be back by the 3rd of January. That was yesterday and as of this morning, the cafes, offices, and malls in the central business district remained unusually empty.

Between the available-for-rent signs with their requisite agent telephone numbers, Queen’s Road, a main shopping thoroughfare, had one new, brightly lit two-floor shop.

Mass Influx

It is not a large-scale international fashion label, an established jeweler, or a known European luxury goods brand but little more than an enlarged convenience store. Middle-of-the-road hair and skin care products were mixed in with an odd combination of packaged food, chocolate, and other consumables possibly portending a city’s downscaled future – or an impending mass influx of mainland tourists.

But the truth is that Hong Kong is not alone. All of Asia has largely ground to a standstill as it typically does between Christmas and the Lunar New Year.

The US does much the same between Thanksgiving and New Year while many central European countries, speak France, get ostracized for the ostensibly inviolable nature of their summer vacations in August.

Laziness Personified

But let’s get even more stereotypical. Based on relatively vivid experience, the business culture in Hong Kong’s financial industry had been, at least until the pandemic, typified by a slow waltz into the office at around 9 claiming some kind of traffic jam or disturbance.

Then, a previously agreed smattering of collected bunches from different teams would leave punctually at around midday and not return until 2-2:30 at the earliest, after which everyone heroically put in time until 7-8 PM at the very least. From the outside, most just seemed to spend their afternoons staring at their computer screens while answering emails at the rate of roughly – or exactly – one every hour.

If something was wanted, needed, or requested, the individual being asked would reflexively clam up and indicate emphatically that they were way too busy. Still, at the end of the day, that same person would steadfastly maintain, within earshot of the nearest proxy expatriate, that they put in more hours than anyone else in the entire financial industry.

Old School

That statement alone might horrify any old-school Swiss banker who has made it a career to arrive at the office promptly before rush hour gets into full swing at 7:30-8:00 in the morning and not leave a minute before 6 in the evening at the earliest.

Still, the Hong Kong claims, at least anecdotally, have some back-up, with «HR Magazine» publishing a report in 2022 that showed 30 percent of the workers put in more than 48 hours a week. But the comparison in the article was to Singapore and Bangkok.

Yet – does this all even matter?

Different Picture

Data from the International Labor Organization, last updated in 2021, show an entirely different picture. There, countries such as Yemen, Qatar, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and the United Arab Emirates seemingly have the highest average hours per week per employee.

Hong Kong places 35th, well below China, which ranks 15th (with Macau just behind at 16th). Most European countries show up at the lower end of the list, although they are not at the bottom. Switzerland places 130th, with the US in 121st place.

Surprisingly, or not, within the context of the wider region, Australia figures in at 145th and New Zealand at 147th.

What Equals What

So, what gives? A quick review of OECD data looking at GDP per hour worked seems to turn everything on its head. Here Ireland tops the list, leading five Eastern European countries (Romania, Turkey, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and Turkey. South Korea is the first entry for Asia Pacific, coming in at eighth, while the US and Switzerland make it in 20th and 21st place respectively.

This is all a very broad brush of widely divergent statistics, inputs, and outputs and none of it isolates large cities, industries, and their contribution. But two things are clear. Productivity and output do not equal hours worked. Also, financial hubs do not figure at the very top of any list. That by itself should give the sector's workers much food for thought about the actual length and duration of their real, effective working hours.

In a world with an increasingly confused signal-to-noise ratio, downtrodden bankers seem to have it pretty good - everything considered. For my part, please get in touch with me well after the Lunar New Year ends.