In one year, employees work 65 hours less in France than in Spain, 122 hours less than in Germany and 162 hours less than in Italy. The institute Rexecode publishes, Wednesday December 6, a study based on European statistics for the year 2022, and the observation is clear: the effective annual working hours of full-time employees remains lower in France than in other countries of the European Union, excluding Finland, since 2012.
Gaps between France and its neighbors
The average annual effective duration declared by full-time employees, questioned by theEurostat “Workforce” survey, is 1,668 hours, compared to a European average of 1,792 hours. Rexecode notes that the differences between France and its neighbors have been fairly stable since 2005, except with Germany, “where the annual duration of effective work decreased between 2006 and 2019 while remaining well above the duration in France”. The difference of three weeks for French and German full-time employees is explained for a third by a shorter weekly working time of one hour in France, and for almost a third by sick leave – 2.1 weeks in France compared to 1.2 in Germany – and, for the rest, by leave.
But the actual working hours of all employees, which includes part-time employees, is slightly higher in France than across the Rhine, the proportion of full-time employees being higher there than in Germany and in the Northern European countries. It is thus 1,550 hours in France, compared to 1,529 hours in Germany. However, Spain, with 1,615 hours, and Italy, with 1,685 hours, remain above. Part-time employees work on average 58% of full-time hours in France compared to 52% in Germany.
“This slightly longer duration [du travail de l’ensemble des catégories de salariés en France] coexists with a lower employment rate [et] part-time work is more common than in other countries,” explained Olivier Redoulès, director of studies at Rexecode.
France and its “big workers”
Also 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. These figures cover full-time and part-time workers aged 20 to 64. The average number of working hours in the European Union is 36.4 hours in 2019. France and Italy, with 36.2 hours each, show figures slightly lower than the EU average. EU. In the five Nordic countries, the average length of the working week is lower than in the EU.
But these data hide significant differences depending on the person. In France, 10.2% of workers work more than 49 hours per week, or nearly 10 hours per day, according to Eurostat. The organization ranks France in 2nd position in the European Union, behind Greece, as a country with the greatest number of “heavy workers”. Business leaders are most concerned. A rate up compared to 2021, where the share was 10%, and higher than the European average, which has 7.3% “heavy workers”.