The Price Of Hidden Costs

As I write this, we have just celebrated the May Day public holiday in Gibraltar and the UK is about to close for the early May Bank Holiday. Having the day off here in the middle of the working week made for a nice change of course but it also set me thinking about the cost of the one-day shutdown.

May Day is of course marked in several other European countries, as well as North America, as a commemoration of the traditional Spring festival, and in many other countries around the world it is also celebrated as International Workers' Day. It may be very popular to have these days off – particularly as the weather turns warmer here in the southern Mediterranean – but there is a cost to business, and therefore to the economy, that may not be immediately obvious.