If work ethic = employees working very hard, I don't think it is a good indicator of a business doing well. From my experience in software at least, Europeans tend to have an excellent work discipline with healthy work-life boundaries. When you look at aggregates, the productivity is pretty much on par if not better, and you have to question why other countries promote this culture of peer pressure where employees constantly feel the need to outcompete each other, while the business thinks it's extracting maximum value out of its resources.