Who Works the Hardest in Europe?
From 32 hours in the Netherlands to more than 43 in Türkiye, the length of the working week varies dramatically across Europe. But working longer doesn’t necessarily mean producing more.
WORK & ECONOMY · EUROPE
Europe is divided by the working week.
At one end of the continent, people in Türkiye work an average of 43.1 hours a week. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina both exceed 41 hours.
At the other end sits the Netherlands, where the average is just 32.1 hours.
That’s a difference of 11 hours every week.
And the divide isn’t random. The map reveals a striking geographic pattern: some of Europe’s longest working weeks are concentrated in the south and east, while many of its shortest are found among the richer economies of northern and western Europe.
Average actual weekly hours worked across all industries.
Greece works the longest hours in the EU
Remove countries outside the European Union and Greece moves to the top.
Greek workers average 39.8 hours a week, followed by Bulgaria at 39.0, Poland at 38.9 and Romania at 38.8.
All four sit comfortably above the EU average of 36 hours.
At the opposite end are the Netherlands at 32.1 hours, Denmark and Austria at 33.9, Germany at 34.0 and Belgium at 34.5.
That means the difference between the longest and shortest working weeks inside the EU alone is 7.7 hours.
Over a year, those weekly differences become substantial. Someone working 7.7 additional hours for 48 working weeks would accumulate the equivalent of roughly 46 extra eight-hour working days.
Europe’s richest economies aren’t working the longest
This is where the ranking becomes more interesting.
Germany has one of Europe’s largest and most productive economies, yet its average working week is only 34 hours.
The Netherlands is lower still.
Meanwhile, several countries with substantially longer working weeks generate considerably less economic output per worker.
The obvious conclusion — that longer working hours should produce greater prosperity — therefore doesn’t fit particularly comfortably with the map.
And that raises a bigger question:
If longer working weeks don’t necessarily make countries richer, what does?
Part of the answer is productivity.
An economy that produces more value during every hour worked can generate high incomes without requiring people to spend as much time at work.
The amount of time people work and the amount they produce are two very different measures.
Why is the Netherlands so low?
There is another reason to be careful with the ranking.
The figures measure average actual weekly hours across employed people. They don’t simply measure the length of a standard full-time contract.
That distinction matters enormously in the Netherlands.
Part-time employment is much more common there than in many other European countries. A large part-time workforce therefore pulls down the national average.
Working patterns, employment structures, parental responsibilities, labour regulation and cultural attitudes towards part-time work can all influence where a country appears in the ranking.
So 32.1 hours doesn’t mean a typical Dutch full-time employee finishes work after 32 hours.
It tells us something broader about how employment is organised.
An east-west divide
Zoom out and another pattern becomes visible.
Türkiye leads the entire dataset at 43.1 hours, followed by Serbia at 41.3 and Bosnia and Herzegovina at 41.1.
North Macedonia records 39.1 hours.
Move north and west and working weeks generally become shorter.
Norway averages 33.7 hours. Denmark and Austria 33.9. Germany 34.0. Belgium 34.5. Finland 34.9.
There are exceptions, but the overall geographic pattern is difficult to ignore.
Europe appears to have something approaching a working-hours divide.
The 11-hour gap
The two extremes illustrate just how different European working lives can be.
Türkiye: 43.1 hours
Netherlands: 32.1 hours
Difference: 11 hours every week.
If that difference persisted across 48 working weeks, it would amount to approximately 528 hours a year — equivalent to 66 eight-hour working days.
That doesn’t tell us who works harder.
But it does show how dramatically the amount of time Europeans spend working can differ depending on where they live.
Working longer isn’t the same as working harder
There is an important limitation to any ranking like this.
Hours measure time, not effort.
They don’t measure the intensity of someone’s work, the economic value they create, their productivity or whether those hours are voluntary.
That’s why describing Türkiye or Greece as Europe’s “hardest-working” countries should be understood as shorthand for working the longest average hours, rather than a judgement about individual workers.
And arguably that makes the data more interesting.
The question isn’t really:
Who works hardest?
It’s:
Why do some European economies need far more working hours than others?
That is where working hours stop being a simple ranking and start telling a much bigger story about productivity, prosperity and the way Europeans organise their lives.
The numbers
43.1 hours — Türkiye
Longest average working week in the dataset.
41.3 hours — Serbia
Second highest.
39.8 hours — Greece
Longest working week in the European Union.
36.0 hours — EU-27
Average across the European Union.
34.0 hours — Germany
32.1 hours — Netherlands
Lowest among EU countries in the dataset.
About the data
The figures show average actual weekly hours worked across all NACE economic activities in the supplied Eurostat dataset.
National averages can be affected by differences in the proportion of people working full-time and part-time, as well as other characteristics of each country’s labour market.
The Euro area aggregate is not included because a value was unavailable in the supplied data.
Source: Eurostat · lfsa_ewhun2
