Which countries work the longest hours?

Stay up to date:
Future of Work
Germany has a reputation for efficiency and it seems it is well earned, with German workers spending the least amount of time in the workplace of all countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) during 2013.
In terms of members of the European Union, the country at the other end of the scale was Greece, whose people worked an additional 700 hours over the course of the year compared to the average German.
Of all OECD countries, Mexicans worked the longest hours, closely followed by South Korea.
US workers clocked up a similar number of hours to the OECD average – 1,770. But that’s still an extra 425 hours on average compared to their German colleagues – the equivalent of 53 working days.
Norwegian, Dutch, Danish and French workers join the Germans at the bottom of the table, all working fewer than 1,500 hours across the year.
To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Author: Paul Muggeridge is Head of Content at Formative Content.
Image: A welder works on a car to be fitted with armor plating at a garage in Mexico City. REUTERS/Claudia Daut.
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Related topics:
Forum Stories newsletter
Bringing you weekly curated insights and analysis on the global issues that matter.
More on Economic GrowthSee all
Kaiser Kuo
June 19, 2025
Mamta Murthi and Sania Nishtar
June 19, 2025
Julia Hakspiel
June 17, 2025
Swapan Mehra and Akim Daouda
June 16, 2025
Aengus Collins
June 12, 2025
John Letzing
June 11, 2025