FACT: Southeast Asians work the longest hours.
THE NUMBERS: Countries with the longest and shortest known working years*
2017 Cambodia, 2,456 hours; Germany, 1,354 hours
2000 South Korea, 2509 hours; Germany, 1,452 hours
1980 South Korea, 2,864 hours; Sweden, 1,517 hours
1950 Chile, 2,678 hours
1929 United States, 2316 hours
1900 France, 3,115 hours
1870 Belgium, 3,483 hours; U.K., 2,976 hours
* Our World in Data. Note that data (a) is available for 70 countries in 2017 and fewer in earlier years, (b) covers “non-agricultural workers,” so is less dependable for countries with large rural/farming populations, and (c) applies to formal-sector workers for whom data is reported and available, and misses sometimes very large informal-sector workforces.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The Washington Post reports on an unusual proposal from the Korean Labor Ministry:
“South Korea’s conservative government has proposed increasing the legal cap on weekly work hours from 52 to 69 … South Koreans already toil more than many of their overseas counterparts. They work an average of 1,915 hours a year, compared with 1,791 hours for Americans and 1,490 hours for the French, who have a 35-hour workweek, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD average is 1,716 hours.”
Comparisons like these are a bit fraught. The OECD, whose data covers 44 middle- and upper-income countries plus averages for the EU and the OECD membership, very responsibly warns that its “data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources and method of calculation.” Broader attempts to add low-income country data (for example the 70-country table published by Our World in Data) are even riskier, (a) low-income country statistical agencies may be less accurate; (b) coverage of informal-sector workers in low- and middle-income countries will be either much spottier than formal-sector work or nonexistent; and these surveys typically exclude farm labor, whose share of total jobs is low in high-income regions but often high in low-income countries. All these cautions noted, the available figures do suggest a couple of conclusions:
1. Southeast Asians spend the most time on the job. Our World in Data, whose figures go through 2017, reports that Cambodians — garment-workers in Phnom Penh, hotel maids and concierges around Siem Reap, truckers, and crane operators on the Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville run – spent an average of 2,456 hours on the job that year.* Also in Our World’s top six: Myanmar at 2,438 hours per year, Malaysia and Singapore at 2,238 hours each, and Bangladesh (“South Asian” by geographic convention but in the same neighborhood) at 2,232 hours. The non-Asian representative in the longest-hour tier is Mexico, at 2,255 hours per year. ASEAN generally is a long-hour region: Thai workers rank 10th in the Our World table with 2,185 hours per year, Vietnam and the Philippines 12th and 13th, and Indonesia 19th with 2,024. To the west and north, India and Pakistan clock in at about 2,100 hours each, with China at a slightly higher 2,174 hours.
2. Europeans spend the least time on the job: Relaxed but efficient Europeans show up at the bottom-hour tiers of all three surveys. Defying all stereotypes, Germans work the fewest hours, at 1,354 per year in Our World’s 2017 table, and 1,349 hours in OECD’s 2021 figures. This is the equivalent of 38 five-day weeks, assuming 8-hour days, with 14 weeks off. Just above the Germans come Danes, Luxembourgers, Dutch, Norwegians, Icelanders, Austrians, Swedes, and French, all working less than 1,500 hours per year. EU workers score well on productivity figures, though, so they get a lot done in their limited office/plant/lab/shop time. Americans are pretty near a hypothetical world average (1,757 working hours by Our World’s count and 1,791 hours according to the OECD) with Japan’s 1,738 hours and Australia’s 1,731 about the same. The longest high-income work years turn up in the Baltic states and Taiwan at nearly 2,000 hours each — 30 8-hour days more than Americans — with Hong Kong’s 2,186 hours and Singapore’s 2,238 hours the high-income world’s longest working years.
3. Over time, people work less: In the very big picture, even the world’s highest work-hour totals look modest when matched against those of earlier times. The Our World database includes 11 countries whose labor ministries were able to estimate annual work hours in 1870. All reported over 3,000 hours a year on the job, with Belgium’s 3,455 hours — essentially a ten-hour day, every day with a couple of holidays and no weekends off — looking like the longest year ever measured. The U.K.’s 2,755 hours, the lowest in the 1870 records, is still 300 hours more than Cambodia’s modern estimate. National holidays, 8-hour-day laws, overtime pay rules, and similar legal and regulatory changes brought these remarkable totals down through much of the 20th century. In the U.S.’ case, the 3,096-hour work year of 1870 fell to 2,605 hours by 1913. In 1950, 15 years after the Fair Labor Standards Act, the work year was just above 2,000 hours.
4. No clear recent pattern: Using a more relatable time frame — say, the last generation’s experience since 1990 or 2000 — no clear pattern appears. The U.S.’ total hasn’t changed much — 1,796 hours in 1990, a bump up to 1,845 in 2000, and 1,796 in 2021. On the other hand, work years have lengthened in much of Asia and parts of Latin America — up by 30 to 84 hours in India, Colombia, Cambodia, the Philippines, China, and Indonesia. Elsewhere, though, Thai workers have cut their 2500-hour year by 310 hours since 2000, Taiwanese by 190 hours, Irish by 187 hours, and Chileans and Costa Ricans by 289 and 155. And as the Korean economy has evolved from a heavy-industry center to a services-and-tech “Hallyu Wave” [link: https://www.progressivepolicy.org/blogs/ppis-trade-fact-of-the-week-squid-game-outdrew-the-world-series-this-year-nov-17-2021/], its working year has fallen by a full 600 hours: 2,677 hours in 1990, 2,509 in 2000, 2,063 in 2017, and most recently 1,909 in 2021. This is still a bit long by high-income country standards, but represents a drop of 600 hours, or 75 8-hour days, in a single generation. Perhaps this suggests why senior Labor Ministry bureaucrats, remembering their weekend-less youth, may feel that 69 hours a week isn’t too much to ask?
* As an example, the 2,456-hour average may reflect the experience of a very limited fraction of Cambodian workers, as ILO figures show 92% of Cambodians are in informal work, and World Bank data report that 75% of Cambodians live in rural areas.
FURTHER READING:
Data and comparisons:
OECD’s working hour data for 44 countries, the EU as a whole, and the OECD membership averages
Our World in Data with working hours per worker in 1870, 1900, 1913, 1929, 1938, and 1951 (for selected countries), and 1980-2017 for 70 countries
The Conference Board has 2021 data for 41 countries (Americas, Europe, wealthy Asia) in table 9, under “Labor Productivity and Per Capita Income Levels and the Effects of Working Hours and Labor Utilization, 2021”
And the International Labor Organization’s working-hour database
The U.S. Geological Survey’s mineral commodity statistics, covering steel, aluminum, and 130 other substantives from abrasives, aggregates, and aluminum to yttrium and zirconium, with salt, pumice through steel, aluminum, rare earth elements, cement, gold, iridium/osmium/platinum, gemstones, tin, and more.
Korea:
WP’s Andrew Jeong (subs. req.) on work-hour law in Korea
The Labor and Employment Ministry isn’t saying much (at least on its English-language page)
And PPI’s Lisa Ly looks at Squid Game, K-pop, and the “Hallyu Wave” economy
Elsewhere:
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs regulates the shortest working year in the world
Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (under the maternal-sounding “mom.gov.sg”) handles the wealthy world’s longest working year
Cambodia’s Labor Ministry
… and Cambodia’s Better Factories program, an ILO-launched system operating since 1999, offers independent inspection for hours, union rights, sexual harassment, and other labor rights standards for garment workers in 557 factories
The U.S.’ Department of Labor on work-hours, overtime, holidays and vacation, and more
And for those with some extra time:
Juliet Schor’s The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1993) wonders why, somewhere in the late 1970s, American workers stopped demanding more time off
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
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