infrastructure, that would allow for a tel avivian to work almost anywhere, by getting there in a jiffy. Some "forces" are not interested in that, that's obvious. We are the size of greater London/LA put together: what's the bloody problem? Of course we still suffer from years of the quasi communist rules imported en bloc by the red Founding Fathers.

Compared to the US, Israelis don't work. They don't even understand what the word MEANS.

Many companies today use the workers as machines, for example, vacations are many times dictated by the company. If the company decides to close on pessach and shavuot, those will be the holidays, regardless of the wants of the employees. The company owners have such horrendous conditions that it some places there is no water to drink (bring your own bottle or drink the dirty tap water.) Other places have dirty toilets, no refrigerators, no microwave and conditions which make working a nightmare. The Israeli bosses don't care, since they know how difficult it is to get a job, they totally take advantage, sometimes not giving raises or holidays. This makes production low, since who would want to work hard for an idiot who sees people as products to make him money and nothing more. The Israel company owners and managers should take courses on how to increase production by making people feel good at work.

Too many Israeli employers abuse their employees, give no positive feedback or proper training and are enabled by the Histadrut. The hotel Industry is a case in point.

are needed! Let's work less hours, but more efficiently! I see too many people hanging around, doing nothing, but staying long hours to make an impression that they are important/ work hard/ are dedicated...

Our workday is 9.25 hours long. And we do a lot of overtime when necessary. Who has the strength to go full speed towards the end of such a long working day? It's no wonder production is down.

my chair. I use to work for companies in London and New York, the London office had a pool and a free staff gym. The New York office likewise. Its not that Israel doesn't have big international companies but the place is increasingly the cheaper English speaking labor for the first world. My counterparts in London and NYC get 3 times my wage for the same job and amazing working conditions.. what gives?!?!

I wouldn't be afraid to say it: Israel has been built by communists ! I spent the Rosh Hashana Holidays in a kibbutz in the north of the country and they were celebrating the kibbutz' 70th birthday. There was a show with a movie explaining how the kibbutz saw the light and how it functions. That looked exactly like an old communist propaganda movie!!!

They work long hours because there is too much arguing no adherence to process.

Low wages = longer hours, but less productivity = I could do my work in 7 hours but i need at least 9-10 hours per day to get the pay i want so might aswell take smoking breaks and coffee breaks, and just sit around. there is no recreation time, shabbat is not recreation time, especially when more than half the country is closed on shabbat. the work week should be mon-fri, leaving work at 3 in the winter and 5 in summer. this makes up for the average workday being 9-10 hours.

In the IT industry In my experience here productivity is very high. The problem is you are required to work 45 hours + a week, you finish the work in half the time and sit around for the other half because all the work is done. The work week must be cut and outsourcing companies are to blame. The non outsourced unionised workers productivity is low and work week shorter because they know that hard work is not rewarded and job security is in stone

Norway Luxembourg are not for comaprison given their exceptionnal strength in oil and fnance.Israel is in the band wagon with Portugal Greece Slovakia Slovenia.Italy is way above Israel despite high taxes on labour. The israeli problem is high taxes on waged labour , and massive fiscal fraud on independent activity. Plus a good 30% of population which does not work at all ( orthodox ) or make believe they are working ( state burocracy ).So compared to population the GDP/hour is weak.The israeli citizen is strangled between a very expensive standard of living ( due to absurd real estate prices propped up by the Minhal mekarkey israel ) and a low income ( due to high taxes to compensate massive fiscal fraud ) so there is no reward from the long work hours, you work more just to breath , not to enjoy your work.

A 6 day week rather than a 5 day one It used to be that stores closed for a couple of hours during the day but no longer and today most people work a full day. Apart from Yom Hatzmaut there are no secular public holiday which hurts religious people who are to busy with religious matters. The icing on the cake is for all those extra hours they put in they still earn a fraction of what they could doing the same job for less hours in other countries.

Perhaps the solution maybe to link productivity to pay, rather than the number of hours worked. Say for example you worked in a factory, you are paid for the volume of work you do rather than the time you spent in the factory. The more productive your are the more money you make. Just a thought.

Not only the longest working week, but 75% on little more (and in most cases even less) than minimum pay. One of the lowest leave allowances in the developed world, barely any lunch break. Absolutely no incentives by employees (most only give the absolute minimum provided in law), inadequate worm space, no cost of living pay increases for most of us. The labor law, in comparison with most countries (USA excepted; China, Korea and S. American countries excepted) is unbelievably weak. Certainly my own experience - and I've worked in 3 countries - has been that Israeli employers are amongst the meanest and worst I've ever had. It's damn time the work week was reduced to 40-42 work hours with a full hour lunch and way, way better conditions. Oh, and I speak as a former labor law consultant.

Make a decent product, control your costs, sell it at a good price and reap the reward. Its not rocket science. As long as you have a closed market with high operating costs (government, taxes etc etc) you cant expect to pay high salaries. Your market cant support that. Way too few people are working to support the many laggards who do nothing. You can work yourselves to death, but as long as your productivity is low and your net profit small you will earn nothing. Its called Economics 101A

Misleading one-dimensional graphs. Israel is at the forefront in: medical research, new techniques and devices, hi-tech agriculture, including many new variations of fruits, pharmaceuticals products, water management and recycling, arms including drones, anti-missile defense systems. Then there are the cultural achievements. All of this while defending ourselves 24/7 from all our neighbors whose economies are very low or disastrous. Israeli economic growth is higher than the US or the EU. OK enough of Israelis achievements. It costs a lot to defend Israel and the taxpayers bear the brunt yet are reportedly the 14th happiest worldwide (Ynet News Sept 2013).

Utter nonsense. Under this kind of analysis, the most productive country in the world would be Qatar or the UAE, who have the laziest people on earth. I have worked in Ireland - they are not productive at all - but the attract capital due to their low tax rates. Israel with Greece? give me a break. Spain productive? They have a 26% unemployment rate. Productivity attracts capital but they do not. And France? NO ONE in France tells the truth about hours worked. The government limits the work hours and so everyone lies about it. The same is true in the US. The government is assuming a 40 hour work week but the true brain workers, the ones producing all the income in the US work far more than that. This chart is so much BS.

willing to endure this sweatshop and having wits to save such giant as Intel. Soon Soviet immigre will retire and than that proud blue line will go down, slightly below that of Somalia's workforce.

hate to disappoint you. most russian DO NOT WORK IN THE HIGH TECH BUSINESS IN ISRAEL. they are mostly shop owners, restauranteurs, engineers and mathematicians in academia. it is the sabras, israeli born and educated in universities that are top in the world like the technion in haifa, the weitzman institute of research and the hebrew university where all the high tech graduates come from. the russians came in the 1980, could not speak a word of hebrew and therefore could not benefit from the job market. they mostly went into academia or became successful businessmen. israel did not boom in the high tech field in the 80's. when the russians came. israel's high tech boom came in the mid 90's and especially grew in the years of 2000 plus. those russians that came in the very early 80's did not have the experience or the knowledge for high tech jobs back then. it is the israeli born and educated youth of the 2000's that lifted israel to the second place behind the usa in high tech genius. a lot of our russian parents were musicians with the moscow philharmonic and brought classical music to israelis. a lot were math and engineering majors, but did not know hebrew at all and opened shops instead of getting jobs and some went into teaching at schools and universities. un fortunately, not a single russian jew immigrant has ever got a nobel prize in israel for anything. it is mostly the sabras that did get them. so, your theory that it is the russian immigrants that developed israeli high tech is very very wrong and based on what it seems, your own agenda of hate towards the israelis. my mother was a math teacher and so were many others. but they went into academia, not into research and not really into high technology jobs. dimitry (dimi) hersovitch beer sheva israel

Meanwhile, the cost of living is going up and the quality of living is going down.

There is a lot more work to be done, nonsense articles like these just foment altogether the wrong attitude.

The question is not the number of hours worked, but the uptodate technologies. We have the same problem in Canada, we are less productive than Europe.

So... you are lazy... but the self-hating attitude doesn't help in this debate.