The new coalition government under the direction of Prime Minister Altanhuyag has declared itself a “reform government” (шинэчлэлийн засгийн газар) with vows to do everything better than previous governments. In particular, the Prime Minister, along with his party colleague, the newly elected mayor of Ulaanbaatar, Mr. Bat-Uul, have both been quoted as saying they will work “12 hours a day” to meet their governing responsibilities. It is refreshing to see top leadership in the country setting a very high standard for commitment to one’s work, but after seeing these statements several times in newspapers I started to wonder what that actually means in the real world.
Let’s start with some context. Mongolian labor laws are fairly generous to employees. A newly hired employee is entitled to no less than 15 days of paid leave per year after their first full year of employment or prorated if a full year is not reached. Over time this total accumulates a few days per year, maxing out at 29 days of paid leave per year with 32 or more years of employment.1 It is important to note that those years of employment are carried with an employee to new jobs, so a newly hired employee with a 15 year employment history is entitled to no less than 20 days of paid leave or cash equivalent from their new employer.
When you compare these numbers to the US labor market, they are not too divergent if you sum the average number of paid vacation days and paid sick days provided by US employers.2 The problem with the comparison, though, is the fact that in Mongolia there is a uniform standard applied to all workers and in the US there is significant variance between individuals, occupations, and industries. The average annual work hours for US workers in 2009 was 2,013,3 which is approximately equivalent to taking just over 8 paid days of leave per year while working 8 hours per day. Any employee working under such conditions in Mongolia would have a right to file a grievance to the relevant labor authorities.
To turn this into more of an apples-to-apples comparison, we can measure work in the US on a annual work hours basis for different occupations and then compare that to the total works hours that are feasible under Mongolian labor laws for any occupation.
Returning to the Prime Minister’s declaration that his government will work 12 hours a day, let’s look at what that means in the context of Mongolia’s labor laws and work hours in the US. According to the Prime Minister’s bio on the Parliament website,4 he has been regularly employed since 1981. That is approximately 31 years of employment, but for our purposes we’ll assume he’s already reached his 32nd year of employment and maxed out his total paid leave entitlement. As such, he is entitled to 29 days of paid leave per year. In addition, there are 10 national holidays per year that an employee is entitled to take off if they fall on a working day. For simplicity, we’ll assume all holidays fall on weekdays. Altogether that means the Prime Minister is entitled to no less than 39 days of paid leave, which if you do the math, almost works out to two months worth of working days.
Figure 1 plots the annual work hour options for a Mongolian worker with a similar employment history to the Prime Minister’s. Taking all holidays off and all paid leave days is equivalent to working 221 days in a year. Taking only holidays off is equivalent to 250 days, and working with no breaks is equivalent to 260 days (assuming a Monday-Friday schedule).
As a worker works more hours per day, the annual work hours increase at each option level. Using data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics,5 I created a data widget to compare feasible annual work hour totals for Mongolian employees against average working hours for different occupations in the US.
Figure 1 includes labels showing some of these comparisons. For example, if the Prime Minister takes all his annual leave and holidays and works 8 hours per day, then his total work hours for the year will be roughly equivalent to an average legislator in the US. Not a particularly ambitious goal, I would say. If he chooses to work 11 hours a day, that is comparable to the average work hours for an anesthesiologist. Obstetricians and gynecologists work the most hours on average from the data set with 2,637 hours annually, so if the Prime Minister sticks to his declaration of 12 hour days, he’ll out perform a US occupation synonymous with irregular and long hours (babies don’t adhere to schedules).
The Prime Minister’s declaration is commendable. Top leadership should set high standards. But, the variance in the work hours for US occupations reveals something important. It is not so much the number of hours you work but how those work hours are spent. Even if the Prime Minister backs away from a 12 hour day (it is arguably not healthy) he still can do a lot of good if he makes the most of the hours he does work. That is a standard he should also promote, and hopefully the entire country benefits. Do more with the time you have. Regardless of declarations, ultimately the proof, as they say, will be in the pudding, and whether his government works 8 hours or 12 hours a day, I think a government that actually outperforms all previous governments is something worth rooting for.
You can make your own comparisons of work hours using the Work Hours Comparison widget. There are some fun occupations in the list (e.g. Cleaning, washing, and metal pickling equipment operators and tenders) to compare your total work hours against.
Footnotes
1. International Labor Organization (ILO), Mongolian Labor Laws, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/WEBTEXT/57592/65206/E99MNG01.htm#c5.
2. US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Table 5. Average paid holidays and days of vacation and sick leave for full-time employees, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm.
3. Ibid., Appendix table 2. Ranking of full-time civilian workers: Average (mean) annual earnings, relative errors, and average (mean) annual hours, all occupations, National Compensation Survey, July 2009, http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20100924ar01p1.htm.
4. Parliament of Mongolia, Who’s who, http://www.parliament.mn/who?type=5&rid=1&cid=13.
5. US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Table 5. Average paid holidays and days of vacation and sick leave for full-time employees, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm.