Norway’s “trillion-dollar man” believes America’s attitude toward failure is helping propel the nation ahead of its European counterparts—where workers may have a better work-life balance but aren’t as ambitious. Norway’s “trillion-dollar man” believes America’s attitude toward failure is helping propel the nation ahead of its European counterparts—where workers may have a better work-life balance but aren’t as ambitious.
Nicolai Tangen leads Nordic behemoth Norges Bank Investment Management, which governs the revenue earned by Norway’s oil and gas resources, with the aim of ensuring its benefits are distributed fairly between current and future Norwegian generations.
Under Tangen’s leadership since 2020, and over the past decade, the $1.6 trillion fund has invested more and more heavily in the U.S. instead of its closer neighbors in Europe—and it’s no coincidence.
America’s performance, particularly in innovation, is “worrisome” in contrast to Europe, Tangen told the Financial Times.
Part of comes down to mindset, Tangen added, and how accepting each continent is of mistakes and risk: “You go bust in America, you get another chance. In Europe, you’re dead,” he said.
But it goes deeper than that—there’s a difference in the “general level of ambition,” he added. “We are not very ambitious. I should be careful about talking about work-life balance, but the Americans just work harder,” Tangen continued.
Data suggests that Tangen is right—but only by a fine margin. According to the European Union, in 2022 the average workweek of people between the ages of 22 and 65 was 37.5 hours. The longest working weeks recorded were in Greece—41 hours a week—and Poland—40.4 hours. By contrast, the Netherlands had the shortest working week of 33.2 hours, followed by Germany at 35.3 hours.
Meanwhile, data from the International Labour Organization, last updated in January, showed the average hours workers clocked in the U.S. was 38 hours a week. However, of those employees, 13% worked 49 hours or more per week, which outstripped the majority of European nations.
Moreover, countries like the U.K. have a statutory requirement entitling staff to 28 paid days of leave a year—if you’re a full-time employee. In the U.S. it is not a legal requirement for staff to be given any paid time off; however, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average employee who is in their first year of service takes eight PTO days.
Despite admiring the work ethic of staffers in the U.S., Tangen has made it clear he doesn’t agree with the extreme pay packages handed to execs. Last year he told Fortune that CEOs who earn more than, say, $20 million a year, are “enriching themselves on our behalf.”
