Mexicans are the Hardest Working People in the World

We’ve got a tongue-in-cheek economic indicator in South Texas. If you see white guys swinging picks and moving dirt with shovels on road crews, unemployment is high. It’s usually Latinos in phosphorescent vests doing the work in the ditch. If they’re displaced by white guys, the economy is in trouble.

In South Texas Latino pretty much means Mexican, or of Mexican descent. It also means hard working.

For reference, there’s The New York Times. A recent article there reported on the findings of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The report surveyed the working habits of people from across the globe and ranked them according to hours worked.

The hardest working people on the planet? Mexicans – hands down.

The bottom of the list? Belgium.

The average Mexican devotes 10 hours a day to paid and unpaid work, like cleaning, child care and cooking at home. Belgians, on the other hand, spend the least time each day working, about seven hours, among the 29 countries covered.

We can talk for days about the Mexican work ethic and how contrary it runs to the mythical “mañana” attitude. But we may miss an important statistic hidden in the report – it’s one thing to work, and another to work for pay.

The main reason Mexicans spend so much time working is because they do so much unpaid work, more than four hours each day, the highest of all the countries evaluated by the O.E.C.D. Most of that work is housework, especially cooking.

If you’re nodding as you read this and totally get it – you might be a Mexican. If you’re a US Latino you very well could be an example of work ethic seepage, where the penchant for hard work oozes across the border. If you are Latina you’ve probably got a bigger ax to grind.

The survey also found:

…in every developed country, women spend more time doing unpaid work than men do.

The entire idea makes you wonder about the definition of  “developed country.”

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda