Italy — 960 hours per year (or an average of 20 hours per week, factoring in vacations).
According to the OECD, the country with the shortest working week is the Netherlands, with a reported 29.5 weekly working hours. Broken down by day, that translates to a four-day workweek with just 7.37-hour days. Denmark follows with 32.5 working hours a week, and then Norway, with 33.6.
Iceland: One of the leaders in the four-day working week
Between 2015 to 2019, Iceland conducted the world's largest pilot of a 35 to 36-hour workweek (cut down from the traditional 40 hours) without any calls for a commensurate cut in pay. Some 2,500 people took part in the test phase.
Belgium. Belgium is the latest country to not only introduce a 4-day workweek, but also gives employees the right to ignore work-related messages and turn off work devices after work hours.
After six months, most of the 33 companies and 903 workers trialling the schedule, with no reduction in pay, are unlikely ever to go back to a standard working week, according to the organisers of the global pilot program.
A New Zealand born initiative to change the work week from five to four days has been tabled as a Parliamentary bill in the UK and will be debated later this month. But it's a different story back home in New Zealand, with the government signalling little motion around the idea.
Spain. Spain had announced that it would run a trial four-day workweek. The Spanish government agreed to a 32-hour workweek over three years without cutting workers' compensation.
1926: Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week after he discovered through his research that working more yielded only a small increase in productivity that lasted a short period of time.
Singapore ranks as the most overworked country in the world, with 7 in 10 employees unhappy at work. The study by Instant Offices compared average working hours, annual leave, and workplace happiness to determine which APAC countries have the strongest culture of overworking, with Singapore coming out on top.
What Country Has the Hardest Workers? Mexico has the world's hardest workers, clocking in at 2,127.8 hours per year on average. That means that the average Mexican worker works for 40.9 hours a week, about 5.7% more than the average worker in the United States.
38 hours. the employee's ordinary hours of work in a week.
6 Days Work Week
Countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea have a high number of average work hours per year.
Countries with the lowest average weekly working hours worldwide 2021. Somalia was the country with the lowest average weekly working hours per employee in 2021, with the most recent value showing that Somalians worked on average less than seven hours per week.
According to the Japanese Labor Law, only 8 hours a day, or 40 hours a week, are allowed. If Japanese companies wish to extend their employee's working hours, they must first conclude special treaties to get acceptance from the government, per Labor Standards Act No. 36.
Although most of Denmark hasn't officially adopted a 4 day work week, it has the second shortest average work week in the world. According to an OECD report, the average work week in Denmark is only 33 hours long. This allows full-time workers in Denmark to spend about 66% of their day on rest and leisure.
To date, Switzerland has not adopted the 4 day work week nor taken part in a 4 day work week pilot program, although some Swiss unions are campaigning for the change. In Switzerland, there is still some skepticism surrounding the idea of the 4 day work week, especially for large businesses.
Mixed results in Sweden
In Sweden, a four-day working week with full pay was tested in 2015, with mixed results. Even left-wing parties thought that it would be too expensive to implement this on a large scale. But some companies chose to keep reduced hours for their workers.
Workers at more than 70 UK companies have begun trialling a four day working week. Similar experiments have taken place elsewhere in the world with positive results. Supporters say that the four day work week boosts productivity, but critics say it is impractical in certain sectors.
Working Hours in Germany
Legal working days in Germany are from Monday to Saturday, but for most workers, a standard work week is from 8 or 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Employees are allowed to work up to 10 hours per day, as long as the total weekly work time is not longer than 48 hours.
Full-Time Employees Cannot Work More Than 10 Consecutive Days. As part of the hours of work that your full-time employees work, it's important to make sure that any full-time employees don't work more than 10 days in a row, regardless of the needs of the workplace.
About a third of working Australians do some work on the weekend, though for most their main job is still on week days.
Story highlights. The United Arab Emirates is the first country in the world to implement a national work week that is shorter than the worldwide five-day week.
Iceland. Iceland tested four-day, 35-36-hour weeks from 2015-2019 with more than 2,500 employees, or roughly 1% of the country's total workforce. Participating employers included police departments, schools, and the Reykjavik mayor's office, and employees kept their same salary. The test was considered a huge success.