21/3/2015

WhoworksthelongesthoursinEurope?|News|TheGuardian

Who works the longest hours in Europe?

Hint: it's not Germany. Find out how many hours people work in different jobs and across the EU

Heather Stewart
Thursday 8 December 2011 13.22 GMT

UPDATE: this now includes productivity gures for each country, too
As Europe's leaders gather to discuss how to rescue the mediterranean economies and
safeguard the single currency, it's tempting to resort to crude national stereotypes of
prudent, hard-working Germans and lazy Greeks.
But the Oce for National Statistics seems to be on a mission to rescue us from our own
prejudices. New data published this morning shows that Greek workers actually put in
longer hours than anyone else in Europe 42.2 per week, compared to just 35.6 in
Germany. If you look at full-time gures, it is even starker.
There are the usual caveats about the reliability of Greek statistics; but that looks like too
large a gap to be explained away by dodgy number-crunching. With youth
unemployment at 43.5%, Greeks these days must feel lucky to hold on to a job at all; but
the news that they've been grafting away, helps to explain why the Greek general public
don't feel they should be blamed for causing the crisis.
Workers in the UK are in the middle of the pack, working 36.3 hours, about an hour a
week less than the EU average; but the ONS points out that's because of the growing
prevalence of part-time work, as exible hours have become more common. If you look
at full-time work, it puts us the top of the biggest economies in the region.
As some of you have pointed out below, a better indicator of work completed may be
productivity, and that does show a dierent picture. If you look at productivity per hour
worked, via Eurostat, then the UK is bang in the middle, with Greece much further down
the pack. The leaders then are Luxembourg and the Netherlands and France and
Germany are in the top division.
The gures also show that our working hours have reduced, too.
Looking at full-time jobs alone, workers in the UK are chained to their desks (or more
likely stuck on a building site, since the occupation with the longest hours is crane
driver), for a miserable 42.7 hours a week.
The key data is below. What can you do with it?

Data summary

EU working hours
Productivity
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/dec/08/europeworkinghours

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WhoworksthelongesthoursinEurope?|News|TheGuardian

Country

EU
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
UK
SOURCE: ONS

All in
Full-time index per
hour
employment employment
worked
(EU=100)
37.4
41.6
100
37.8
43.7
115
36.9
41.7
134.7
40.9
41.3
41.7
40
42.1
80
41.2
42.3
70.1
33.8
39.1
119.2
38.6
40.8
61.1
37.4
40.3
111.3
38
41.1
132.7
35.6
42
123.7
42.2
43.7
76.3
39.4
40.6
59.2
35
39.7
125.6
37.6
40.5
101.5
39.2
40.8
47.1
38.3
39.7
55.7
37
40.5
189.2
38.8
41.4
81.9
30.5
40.9
136.5
40.6
42.2
53.9
39.1
42.3
65.4
40.5
41
41.7
40.5
41.5
78.4
39.6
41.8
80.2
38.4
41.6
107.9
36.5
40.9
115.5
36.3
42.7
107.2

Download the data

DATA: download the full spreadsheet

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Topics
Oce for National Statistics
Work & careers
Work-life balance
Greece
Germany

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