Working hours through history
Workers now work 20 to 30 hours less every week than in the 19th century.
Average work hours in developed countries fell from 3,000 hours per year in 1870 to between 1,500 and 2,000 hours per year by 1990.
But this long-term decline in average annual work hours has slowed down in almost all OECD countries, and occasionally reversed itself. Interestingly, the work time in primitive hunter-gatherer societies is much lower than in modern agrarian societies.
| Prehistoric (hunter-gatherer societies) | 4.86 hours per day (from 2.8 to 7.6 h/day) |
| 13th century (adult male peasant, UK) | 1,620 hours/year |
| 14th century (casual laborer, UK) | 1,440 hours/year |
| Middle ages (English worker) | 2,309 hours/year |
| 1400-1600 (farmer-miner, adult male, UK) | 1,980 hours/year |
| 1840 (average worker, UK) | 3,105-3,588 hours/year |
| 1850 (average worker, US) | 3,150-3,650 hours/year |
| 1987 (average worker, US) | 1,949 hours/year |
| 1988 (manufacturing workers, UK) | 1,856 hours/year |
Working hours by country
Working hours is time spent in productive activities, whether paid or unpaid.
Working hours in OECD countries
On average, a full-time employee in an OECD country works 37 hours per week.
Working hours in EU
On average, a full-time employee in the European Union works 37.1 hours per week (main job). In 2019, the longest working hours are reported in Romania (40.5 hours per week) and Bulgaria (40.4 hours per week). The statistics also show that in Belgium, the number of working hours for employees was 39.1 hours per week, while it was 52.8 for self-employed.
The data were gathered for all EU Member States and the United Kingdom, three EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), and four candidate countries (Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey).
By EU labor law,, working hours are limited to 48 hours per week, including overtime (if permitted by national law, you may have an agreement with a staff member to work beyond the 48-hour limit).
Working hours in UK
On average, a full-time employee in the United Kingdom works 1,730 hours per year, or 36.04 hours per week.
Working hours in Germany
On average, a full-time employee in Germany works 1,573 hours per year or 32.77 hours per week.
Working hours in US
On average, a full-time employee in the United Stats works 1,801 hours per year, or 37.5 hours per week, which is more than other OECD countries.
For example, Europeans work up to 19 percent fewer hours annually compared to those working in the US. For Americans that's 258 hours extra per year, or about an hour per working day.
Annual working hours by city
| 1 | Mumbai | 2,691 h |
| 2 | Hanoi | 2,691 h |
| 3 | Mexico City | 2,622 h |
| 4 | New Delhi | 2,511 h |
| 5 | Bogotá | 2,358 h |
| 6 | Dubai | 2,323 h |
| 7 | Istanbul | 2,319 h |
| 8 | Seoul | 2,307 h |
| 9 | Manila | 2,289 h |
| 10 | Nairobi | 2,285 h |
| 11 | Jakarta | 2,282 h |
| 12 | Tel Aviv | 2,264 h |
| 13 | Doha | 2,250 h |
| 14 | Johannesburg | 2,245 h |
| 15 | Bangkok | 2,209 h |
| 16 | Hong Kong | 2,171 h |
| 17 | Taipei | 2,163 h |
| 18 | Santiago de Chile | 2,150 h |
| 19 | Panama City | 2,140 h |
| 20 | Chicago | 2,124 h |
| 21 | Kuala Lumpur | 2,105 h |
| 22 | Beijing | 2,096 h |
| 23 | Athens | 2,092 h |
| 24 | Bratislava | 2,085 h |
| 25 | New York | 2,046 h |
| 26 | Lima | 2,033 h |
| 27 | Manama | 2,031 h |
| 28 | Riyadh | 2,013 h |
| 29 | Miami | 2,003 h |
| 30 | London | 2,003 h |
| 31 | Los Angeles | 1,999 h |
| 32 | Tokyo | 1,997 h |
| 33 | Shanghai | 1,987 h |
| 34 | Geneva | 1,975 h |
| 35 | Sydney | 1,951 h |
| 36 | Montreal | 1,947 h |
| 37 | Auckland | 1,920 h |
| 38 | Milan | 1,912 h |
| 39 | Lisbon | 1,911 h |
| 40 | Riga | 1,909 h |
| 41 | Toronto | 1,906 h |
| 42 | Sofia | 1,901 h |
| 43 | Zagreb | 1,898 h |
| 44 | Ljubljana | 1,895 h |
| 45 | Nicosia | 1,892 h |
| 46 | São Paulo | 1,890 h |
| 47 | Cairo | 1,888 h |
| 48 | Kyiv | 1,888 h |
| 49 | Warsaw | 1,884 h |
| 50 | Stockholm | 1,866 h |
| 51 | Budapest | 1,862 h |
| 52 | Dublin | 1,856 h |
| 53 | Vilnius | 1,852 h |
| 54 | Madrid | 1,851 h |
| 55 | Tallinn | 1,841 h |
| 56 | Munich | 1,830 h |
| 57 | Vienna | 1,822 h |
| 58 | Brussels | 1,822 h |
| 59 | Bucharest | 1,820 h |
| 60 | Zurich | 1,813 h |
| 61 | Luxembourg | 1,809 h |
| 62 | Rio de Janeiro | 1,807 h |
| 63 | Prague | 1,798 h |
| 64 | St Petersburg | 1,798 h |
| 65 | Amsterdam | 1,794 h |
| 66 | Berlin | 1,794 h |
| 67 | Buenos Aires | 1,792 h |
| 68 | Lyon | 1,788 h |
| 69 | Oslo | 1,780 h |
| 70 | Barcelona | 1,774 h |
| 71 | Frankfurt | 1,773 h |
| 72 | Helsinki | 1,750 h |
| 73 | Moscow | 1,720 h |
| 74 | Copenhagen | 1,712 h |
| 75 | Paris | 1,663 h |
Weekdays and paid time-off by country
Workdays and weekends differ by countries.
In most of the world, the workweek is from Monday to Friday, but not everywhere. For example, in muslim-majority countries, workweek is from Sunday to Thursday. Also, some countries work six days per week and some have a 4-day workweek.
Most of the countries in the world have laws setting the maximum length of the work week, except the United States.
The US is the only industrialized country in the world that has no legally mandated annual leave and does not guarantee its workers paid vacation.
European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year (some even go higher to 25 and even 30 or more days). Australia and New Zealand require employers to grant at least 20 vacation days per year, and Canada and Japan mandate at least 10 paid days off.
In addition to mandated paid annual leave, workers also get paid time off for public holidays. For instance, the US offers none, but most of the rest of the world's rich countries offer at least 6 paid holidays per year (while some countries like Cambodia and Iran offer 27 paid holidays).
In the absence of government standards, 23 percent of Americans have no paid vacation and no paid holidays. According to government survey data, the average US worker receives only about 10 days of paid vacation and about 6 paid holidays per year - less than the minimum legal standard set in the rest of world's rich economies
Productivity and overtime
A longer working week does not necessarily result in higher levels of productivity.
For example, workers in Mexico have the longest annual shifts on the planet, but their GDP per hour is among the lowest.
As productivity increases, working hours decrease. For example, employees in Denmark have the lowest annual working hours in the world, but their GDP per hour is among the highest.
Productivity has been increasing exponentially for more than a century.
An average worker today needs to work a 11h/week to produce as much as one working 40h/week in 1950. But fast productivity growth has not necessarily reduced work time.
Overtime is legaly regulated by most countries by a combination of regulations and collective bargaining.
For example, in France, Portugal and Spain the influence of legislation is particularly strong; in Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom collective bargaining is considerably more important.
Regular overtime is both harmful to workers and unproductive. In contrast, statutory hours limits contribute towards enhancing productivity. Reasonable hours limits help to maintain workers' health and thereby their productive capacity. They also function as an incentive for companies to modernize their work organization, including their working time arrangements, and to invest in improving their technology and enhancing the skills of their management and workforces.
For instance, France has introduced a 35-hour working week as a part of a labour law reform in 2000, where time worked after the standard legal limit of 35 hours is considered overtime. But even though the standard hours worked in a week have been lowered to 35, many occupations demand much more. The French bar association (CNB) says that 44% of lawyers in the country worked 55 hours or more a week in 2008.
The problem of long working hours is often linked with low wages, but not in all cases. For example, people who work more used to earn less, but today the trend is reversing. In 1983, the most poorly paid 20 percent of workers were more likely to put in long work hours than the top paid 20 percent. By 2002, the best-paid 20 percent were twice as likely to work long hours as the bottom 20 percent.
References
- Hours worked - OECD Data
- GDP per hour worked - OECD Data
- Working Hours - Our World in Data
- Average usual weekly hours worked on the main job - OECD Stat
- Weekly average working hours - Statista
- Average weekly hours and overtime of all employees - US Department of Labour
- Global cities ranking - UBS
- No-Vacation Nation Revisited - CEPR
- Why High Earners Work Longer Hours - National Bureau of Economic Research
- Trend in working hours - OECD Library
- List of minimum annual leave by country - Wikipedia
- Workweek and weekend - Wikipedia
- Full-Time Jobs With Shortest and Longest Hours - Monster
- Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's - MIT Edu
- Diminishing Returns at Work: The Consequences of Long Working Hours
- Are we working more than ever? - Our World in Data
- Average usual weekly hours worked on the main job - OECD Stat
- Hours worked - OECD Data
- Hours of work - annual statistics - Eurostat Statistics Explained
- Average weekly hours and overtime of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- GDP per hour worked - OECD Data
