As we can see, the country that works the most hours per person is Greece, with 39 hours. This is followed by Russia with 38. Ireland ranks fourth overall with 36 hours of work per week. While several European countries work less than 40 hours a week on average, that is not the case, nor is it feasible in other countries around the world. In the United States, many full-time employees struggle to achieve work-life balance and often waste time on vacation to do more in the office.
However, American workers may be surprised by the average number of hours workers spend in other countries each week. As some of you have pointed out below, a better indicator of the work done may be productivity, and that does show a different picture. If we look at productivity per hour worked, through Eurostat, then the United Kingdom is in the middle, with Greece much lower. The leaders are Luxembourg and the Netherlands and France and Germany are in the first division.
In Greece, people work more days than anywhere else in the European Union, with an average of 42.3 hours per week, according to Eurostat. At the other end of the scale, data show that the Dutch, famous for having the best work-life balance in all OECD countries, have the shortest week, recording an average of only 30.3 hours. Considering factors such as average hours worked per day, time spent playing and total holidays, here are the top 10 countries for those looking to inject a little more leisure into their lives. A new working paper, detected by Quartz, analyzes the average annual working hours per person in 18 European countries and the US.
UU. (taking into account vacation time). Several commentators have suggested that Greeks work much longer hours than other EU countries because the threat of a financial crisis hangs more on their heads than in other parts of the bloc. When considering countries outside the EU, Turkey, which stretches between Southeast Europe and West Asia, has the longest working week, recording a staggering 49.4 hours per week on average.
The researchers collected data from the European Workforce Survey, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the German Microcensus to produce the classification. It is also important to note that countries with shorter workweeks do not necessarily earn lower annual wages than those that work longer hours.
