What are the countries where we work the most? Is France one of them?
Laziness and laziness are clichés that stick to the skin of the French, but what do the figures say? While it is difficult to judge the state of mind and motivation of French citizens, the time they spend at work has been observed, dissected and analyzed on numerous occasions. It is especially compared to working time in other countries byInternational Labor Organization (ILO) which has just revealed its latest statistics.
These are clear: France is indeed one of the countries where the average time spent working by its workers is one of the lowest. It is even lower than the 35 hours of work per week put in place since the 2000s thanks to the reform which aimed to reduce legal working hours. Across Europe, most countries have an average working time per worker which is around 34 to 36 hours, still a few hours more than the French who work on average 30.1 hours according to the ILO.
France is not last in the ranking of European countries on working hours, but… penultimate. Only Austria, where the average working week is 29.5 hours, does less. It must be said that if European countries are equal within a few hours, some are exploding the working hours per week, mainly in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Here is the list of the 10 countries where we work the most in Europe:
- Malta: 42.8 hours
- Montenegro: 42.7 hours
- Albania: 41.2 hours
- Poland: 40.1 hours
- Romania: 39.8 hours
- Bulgaria: 39.5 hours
- Ukraine: 39 hours
- Lithuania: 38.7 hours
- Latvia: 38.4 hours
- North Macedonia: 37.7 hours
And on an international level, are the French and Europeans in the high or low average of average weekly working hours? France is in 153rd position out of 163 countries evaluated. ILO data shows that people in other parts of the world work much more in a week.
If in Western countries like the United States and Canada workers work like Europeans, respectively 36.4 and 32.1 hours per week, everywhere else the hourly quota is higher. In Asia and Africa in particular, workers in many countries work more than 40 hours per week:
- United Arab Emirates: 52.6 hours
- Gambia: 50.8 hours
- Bhutan: 50.7 hours
- Lesotho: 49.8 hours
- Congo: 48.6 hours
- Qatar: 48 hours
- India: 47.7 hours
- Mauritania: 47.5 hours
- Liberia: 47.2 hours
- Bangladesh: 46.9 hours
- Pakistan: 46.7 hours
- Jordan: 46.6 hours
- Lebanon: 46.6 hours
- Maldives: 46.2 hours
- China and Brunei: 461 hours
If a correlation between working hours and the level of development of the country seems to be confirmed with the ILO figures, certain exceptions call this link into question: the United Arab Emirates is far from being the least developed territory with the 33rd highest GDP globally in 2022. As for India and China, they are among the top ten world powers in 2023. There are a few other exceptions with lower working hours than in Europe in countries classified among the least developed by the UN: Rwanda and Mozambique (28 hours), Ethiopia (29 hours) or even Kiribati (27 hours) and Vanuatu (24 hours).