The typical workweek might be anywhere from less than 40 hours to about 50 hours long. The official workweeks in high-income and/or developed nations, where enough leisure and family time are valued culturally, are typically shorter (some are as short as four days), as are the vacation days.
These nations also exhibit a trend towards more generous overtime pay, worker-friendly legislation, favourable maternity leave policies, and a higher propensity to rank among the world’s happiest nations.
While they frequently rate as hard-working nations, those with longer workweeks, fewer labour rights, and fewer facilities also tend to have populations that are less content and may even be overworked.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) keeps tabs on a variety of labour statistics, including the number of hours that both employees and unemployed persons really put in each week.
Although these two phrases are generally equivalent, their definitions vary when it comes to labour statistics.
In a traditional employment setting, those who work full- or part-time are considered employees.
Contrarily, those who are employed include both self-employed people and the aforementioned regular employees.
The Economic History Association notes that because different cultures have different ideas about what counts as work and who is a worker, comparing the average number of hours worked per week in one nation to another can be difficult.
However, when there is sufficient data to gather and analyse, trends do appear.
Shorter workweeks are often more prevalent in high-income nations like Germany and France than in middle-income and developing nations.
Workweeks are probably the longest of all, at least for those who can find employment, in low-income and least-developed nations, but reliable data are frequently hard to come by.
Engineers that specialise in the energy sector (oil & gas, wind, hydropower), as well as software engineers and hardware developers, are needed in Norway, another OECD nation with a short workweek (and one of the greatest Human Development Index scores in the world). The fact that Norwegian drivers are among the safest in the world may comfort professional drivers looking to migrate.
