An analysis published by Folha de São Paulo claims that 'Brazilians do not work much,' attributing this to a cultural preference for leisure. This assertion was based on a dataset from Gethin & Saez (2025) which harmonizes worked hours across 160 countries. However, upon re-evaluating the data, results show a significant variability in the number of hours Brazilians should be working, ranging from −189 to +206 minutes per week depending on the analysis method.

Moreover, including institutional controls — like taxation, informality, and work regulation — that were identified by the original paper as primary determinants of work hours, yields an opposite conclusion: Brazilians may actually be working more than expected. The cultural hypothesis, when analyzed through the World Values Survey data, is dismissed as conditional upon institutions, revealing that cultural dimensions, which counter the initial narrative, suggest that 50% of Brazilians believe 'work should come first,' compared to 28% of Americans, 29% of Germans, and merely 10% of Japanese.

In conclusion, the analysis indicates that the understanding of Brazilian work hours can’t be generalized and is heavily influenced by institutional factors rather than strictly cultural ones. This discourse highlights the importance of careful statistical interpretation and suggests further investigation is needed to draw reliable conclusions about work habits in Brazil.