| |||||
KILM 6. Hours of work
Introduction
Three measurements related to working time are included here to give an overall picture of the time that the employed throughout the world devote to work activities. The first measure relates to employed persons who usually work a “short” number of hours per week (those whose usual hours of work are below one half of the usual weekly hours for most employed persons, in this case 20 hours per week or less). The second relates to persons who usually work “excessive” hours per week (those whose usual hours of work are above the usual weekly hours for most persons in employment, in this case 40 hours per week). When other thresholds are used, these are indicated in the notes for the indicator. The third measure is of the average annual number of hours worked per person. The data assembled for this indicator are generally from household surveys and population censuses and, whenever possible, are presented separately for men and women. The coverage is generally all workers. Information for at least one of the three elements is presented in table 6a and 6b for 60 economies.
Trends
Figure 6a. Percentage of males and females working more than 40 hours per week by regional grouping, latest years
The percentage of men and women working 40 hours or more varies between economies but, in the majority of economies, men are more likely to work long hours than women (hence most data points fall below the 1:1 diagonal in figure 6a). The two exceptions to this are Aruba and Hungary. The Central and Eastern European economies have the highest proportions of both men and women in the “excessive” hours group: over 75 per cent of both men and women work 40 hours per week or more.
Figure 6b. Annual hours worked per person, selected developed (industrialized) economies, 1990-2001
Working hours have decreased in many developed (industrialized) economies since 1990. Only in Greece, Iceland and Sweden did annual numbers of hours worked per person increase in the period. The largest decreases in annual hours – of 100 hours per person - were seen in Belgium, France, Ireland and Portugal. Elsewhere in the world, annual hours have generally decreased as well, although some notable exceptions exist; annual hours per person increased by 100 hours or more in Ecuador, Mexico and Peru.
Figure 6c. Annual hours worked per person, latest years
Nine economies (of 48) reported over 2000 annual hours worked per person in the latest year for which data are available. Asian workers are putting in the most hours on the job; the top six economies in terms of annual hours worked are all Asian – Thailand (2,228 annual hours per worker), Malaysia (2,244), Hong Kong, China (2,287), Sri Lanka (2,288), Bangledesh (2,301) and Republic of Korea (2,447).
