Average working hours in Europe: Which countries work the longest and shortest weeks?

How many hours do you work per week? New data from Eurostat, the EU’s official statistics office, shows that the average working hours across Europe vary widely from country to country. 

Patterns of work have been changing in recent years. Rates of working from home increased in the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some companies now provide more flexible options to work remotely. 

Four-day weeks with the same workload have also been on trial in several countries. In 2022, employed people in the EU aged 20-64 years worked 36.2 hours on average per week. This was 24 minutes less than the pre-pandemic figures of 2019.

So, which countries have the longest and shortest working hours?

In 2022, the average number of actual weekly working hours in a main job in the EU ranged from 32.4 hours in the Netherlands to 39.7 hours in Greece and Romania. This included both full-time and part-time workers aged 20-64 years.

When the European countries for which this information is available were compared, Turkey had the longest working weeks at 42.9 hours in 2020, which is the latest data.

Turkey was followed by Montenegro (42.8 hours, 2020 data) and Serbia (42.3 hours). These are the countries having average working weeks of longer than 40 hours.

Greece and Romania were followed by Poland (39.5 hours), Bulgaria (39.2 hours) and North Macedonia (39 hours).

This all suggests that people in Balkan countries have the longest average working hours per week.

In the list of countries with the shortest average working weeks in 2022, the Netherlands (32.4 hours) was followed by Austria (33.7 hours), Norway (34.1 hours) and Denmark and Germany (both 34.6 hours).

The UK (36.4 hours in 2019) had the same amount of average working hours as the EU. France and