The number of people on the staff is only half of the equation. Equally important is the number of hours worked per year.
For example, we have 36 holes and 20 staff, but this being France, (a socialist, workers’ paradise, if ever there was one) weeks paid vacation and 12 national holidays. This works out to about 1700 hours per year (not counting the inevitable absences due to illness, car trouble, funerals, baptisms, and general lameness, but for the purposes of this exercise we’ll disregard those). Thus, 1700 hours times 20 people divided by 36 holes is 944 man hours per hole per year.
Now, if you had 20 people for the same task in the United States working an average of 45 hours per week (a realistic figure according to GCSAA surveys) with 2 weeks vacation, and 6 holidays, then there are 2200 hours per year per employee, or 1222 man hours per year per hole, a 30% increase over their European colleagues. A staff of 20 in the US is worth 26 in France.
In the recent thread on management companies, several people referred to “attention to detail”. Well, attention to detail is the most labor intensive aspect of managing a golf course, and the first thing to go when man hours are short. All that string trimming, filling divots, walk-mowing greens, edging bunkers, blowing debris, etc. really stacks on the man hours, and consequently the budget.