This is more or less your statistical guide to life, the universe and everything.

This week we'll ask where in the world people work the longest hours and we'll revisit the great

Greek taxi controversy. Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service.

Earlier in the year we looked at who worked harder, the Greeks or the Germans and found

to the surprise of most that on all measures the Greeks did far more hours than the Germans did.

But as we discovered Germany produces far more per hour and can be said to be more efficient.

But this got us thinking about what the international comparisons were and who works the

longest hours in the world. We decided to contact John Messenger, an expert in working hours

from the international labour organisation to find out. Well it's tough to name one particular

country but what you'll find in general is that Asian countries tend to work the longest hours

on an annual basis. They also tend to have the highest proportions of workers who are working

what we would say are excessively long hours of more than 48 hours per week. Korea particularly

sticks out because it's a developed country that's working long hours. Normally it's developing

countries like Bangladesh, like Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, countries like this that are working

very long hours. Now Korea as I understand it nearly 2,200 hours a year. What's going into that

data? What's being measured is the average annual hours actually being worked during a year

for every person in employment. And the situation is really one in which you had a country

that was developing, working very hard to raise its standard of living, has reached now the status

of being a developed country and yet has developed this pattern of long hours working which is in

fact becoming counterproductive. Not only in terms of their ability to continue to advance the people

who are working very long hours or in the workforce actually it's viewed as preventing others from

having an opportunity to enter the workforce if the hours were shorter. So the Korean government

...