In the EU, in 2023, people aged 20-64 years in employment worked 36.1 hours on average per week. This number refers to the hours people actually worked in their main job in the reference week.

The average actual working hours per week differ between EU countries (see Map 1). Those with the longest working week were Greece (39.8 hours), Romania (39.5), Poland (39.3) and Bulgaria (39.0).

By contrast, the Netherlands had the shortest working week (32.2 hours), followed by Austria (33.6) and Germany (34.0).

Employed people by the average actual working hours in a week

In the EU, in 2023, 37.1 % of employed people worked on average between 40 and 44.5 hours in a week, whilst only 7.1 % recorded less than 20 actual hours of work per week, in the main job (see Figure 1). The 40-44.5 range of actual working hours represents the largest share in most countries – except for Ireland, Finland, Belgium, France and Denmark, where the greatest share of employed people was for the range of 35-39.5 average worked hours per week.

The same range of hours (40 to 44.5) also shows the greatest differences across countries. Indeed, the largest shares were recorded in Bulgaria (82.2 %), Romania (80.2 %) and Latvia (77.7 %). The lowest shares were found in Belgium (16.1 %), France (13.3 %) and Denmark (10.6 %).