I moved to Australia and noticed a huge difference that I can’t get over: “You should pay me $1 million to go back to America”
An American expat has shared a huge change she has noticed about Australia since moving to Australia.
Brooke Laven previously worked in the United States, South Korea and Chile before heading to Australia earlier this year.
Of the three, she says Australians have the “perfect work-life balance” and are “hard-working” but “know when to draw the line”.
For this reason, the young expat enjoys living in Australia and explored what others thought by sharing a video on Tik Tok.
Brooke Laven (pictured) previously worked in the US, South Korea and Chile before heading to Australia. Of the three, she says Australians have the “perfect work-life balance” and are “hard-working”, but “know when to draw the line”.
“I have a Thai roommate and I asked him the other day what he thought of Australia. He said, ‘Oh man, they work so hard,'” Brooke said in the TikTok video.
“Then I had a conversation with my UK colleagues who said, ‘Working here has been so easy compared to London’.”
Rather than sharing her opinion alone, she did some research and found a report online about Treasury which analyzed the productivity of Australian workers.
The document claims that Australians are “20% less productive than Americans”, which has fallen from 75% to 80% since the mid-1980s.
“It’s about comparing hours worked to GDP (gross domestic product),” Brooke said.
The report states: “If Australian workers were as productive as their peers in the United States in terms of output per hour, then hours worked per capita would determine GDP per capita relative to the United States.
“Similarly, if Australian and American workers worked similar hours, relative labor productivity would determine relative earnings.”
However, many have pointed out that Australians who work full time receive four weeks of annual leave each year while Americans only receive 13 days, which would impact the report’s findings.
Others agreed and said Australians ‘work to live, not to work’
“We have a lot more time off in Australia. Does this calculation include that? If not, that will explain the difference,” one commented.
“We have quite a strong union presence in Australia compared to the United States. We work to live, not to work,” wrote another.
A third said: “It depends. I work in a company and it’s 12 hours a day every day. Plus the weekends, which I don’t get paid for.
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