A week’s wages

By Economist.com

How long must average workers in Europe toil to make what their bosses earn in an hour?

IT TOOK around ten days for the average Italian worker to make the €767 ($957) that his firm's chief executive made in an hour in 2012, according to calculations by The Economist. Combining private-sector pay figures from the Federation of European Employers, a trade group, with data on the average hours worked per week (only data for the whole economy were available) gives the approximate number of days needed for employees to match their bosses’ hourly stipends. The pay gap between the top brass and the lowliest worker is generally greatest in former Soviet countries—and Spain and Italy. The disparity is smallest in Nordic countries, and in Switzerland, where presumably everyone is paid well. But how many hours does a chief executive work? Studies from the Executive Time Use Project, a research unit set up to monitor bosses, suggest they work 45-55 hours a week (compared with the average worker's 38 hours). Most of that time is spent in meetings. The project also found that a one-percentage-point increase in the hours executives work boosts sales by about 1.1 percentage points.