The Great British Bunk Off Isn't Why We're Unproductive

The Economist has been having a moan about August. --Offices half-empty, parks full, out-of-office emails piling up, and nobody quite admitting they're not really working.-- Unlike France, which openly shuts down for les grandes vacances, Britain pretends to keep going over summer while quietly doing very little. And in a country with notoriously poor productivity, the argument goes, this 'Great British Bunk Off' is something we really ought to tackle.

But France bunks off harder and produces more

The obvious problem with blaming summer is the comparison The Economist itself chooses. France shuts down far more comprehensively in August than we do, and yet French workers produce considerably more per hour than British ones.

In other words, the countries that take proper holidays are more productive per hour worked, not less. If anything, the lesson from across the Channel is that you should take a real break rather than half-work through the summer, not that you should be chained to your desk. A fortnight of genuine rest probably does more for output than six weeks of half-hearted inbox-checking from a campsite in Cornwall, and I suspect most managers know it.

We can barely measure productivity anyway

The other issue is that our productivity data is in such a state that pinning anything on a few weeks in August is a bit stilly. The latest ONS flash estimate shows output per hour either up 0.7% or down 0.2% in the year to Q2 2026, depending on which data source you use.

When the official statistics can't agree whether productivity went up or down, a seasonal dip in office attendance is a rounding error. Britain's productivity problem is a long-run story about low investment, poor infrastructure, a planning system that stops anything being built and a lot of low-wage service work. None of that is fixed by making people answer emails from the lido. Nor, for that matter, is it caused by them.

The real Bunk Off is about childcare

What The Economist mentions only in passing is the real driver of the August slowdown: the kids are off school. For six weeks, working parents are juggling holiday clubs, grandparents, annual leave and a fair bit of working with one eye on a child and the other on a laptop.

That's not people being inveterate liars about how hard they're working, it's the structural reality of a country where the school calendar was designed around the harvest and childcare costs a fortune. If employers want parents fully present in August, the answer is decent holiday provision, not a crackdown on vague out-of-office replies. Flexible working, which plenty of firms are now trying to row back on, has arguably done more to keep parents productive over summer than any amount of presenteeism ever did.

Final thoughts

I think the honest move would be for Britain to be a bit more French about it. Accept that August is quieter, let people take proper time off, and stop the performative pretence of being busy.

Blaming the summer holidays for weak productivity is a bit like blaming the weekend. The problem isn't that people aren't at their desks for a few weeks, it's what happens, or doesn't happen, at those desks for the other forty-odd weeks of the year. And frankly, if you do manage to find a spot at the lido, good on you.