This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Working time" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on
Organized labor
Labor movement Conflict theories Decent work Exploitation of labor Timeline New unionism Proletariat Social movement unionism Social democracy Democratic socialism Socialism Communism Syndicalism Union busting Anarcho-syndicalism National-syndicalism
Labor rights Freedom of association Collective bargaining Child labor Unfree labor Diversity, equity, and inclusion Equal pay Employment discrimination Legal working age Four-day week Sabbatical Eight-hour day Annual leave Paid time off Occupational safety and health Overwork Professional abuse Sick leave Toxic workplace Minimum wage Occupational safety and health Employment protection
Trade unions Trade unions by country Trade union federations International comparisons ITUC WFTU
Strike action Chronological list of strikes Hartal General strike Bandh newspapers Green bans Lockouts Overtime bans Pen-down strikes Sitdown strikes Solidarity action Walkouts Whipsaw strikes Wildcat strikes Work-to-rule
Labor parties Australia Barbados Brazil Fiji Georgia Hong Kong Ireland Israel Malta New Caledonia New Zealand Netherlands Norway Portugal Singapore South Korea United Kingdom Sweden
Academic disciplines Industrial relations Labor economics Labor history Labor law
v t e

Working (laboring) time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week.

Many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays, and a maximum number of working hours per week. Working time may vary from person to person, often depending on economic conditions, location, culture, lifestyle choice, and the profitability of the individual's livelihood. For example, someone who is supporting children and paying a large mortgage might need to work more hours to meet basic costs of living than someone of the same earning power with lower housing costs. In developed countries like the United Kingdom, some workers are part-time because they are unable to find full-time work, but many choose reduced work hours to care for children or other family; some choose it simply to increase leisure time.^[4]

Standard working hours (or normal working hours) refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. The employer pays higher rates for overtime hours as required in the law. Standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 40 to 44 hours per week (but not everywhere: from 35 hours per week in France^[5] to up to 105 hours per week in North Korean labor camps)^[6] and the additional overtime payments are around 25% to 50% above the normal hourly payments.^{[citation needed]} Maximum working hours refers to the maximum working hours of an employee. The employee cannot work more than the level specified in the maximum working hours law.^[7]

In advanced economies, working time has declined substantially over time while labor productivity and real wages have increased.^[8] In 1900, American workers worked 50% more than their counterparts today.^[8] The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimated that globally in 2016 one in ten workers were exposed to working 55 or more hours per week and 745,000 persons died as a result of having a heart disease event or a stroke attributable to having worked these long hours, making exposure to long working hours the occupational risk factor with the largest disease burden.^[9]

Hunter-gatherer

Since the 1960s, the consensus among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agrarian societies;^[10][11] for instance, one camp of !Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day.^[12] Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours.^[10]

Subsequent studies in the 1970s examined the Machiguenga of the Upper Amazon and the Kayapo of northern Brazil. These studies expanded the definition of work beyond purely hunting-gathering activities, but the overall average across the hunter-gatherer societies he studied was still below 4.86 hours, while the maximum was below 8 hours.^[10] Popular perception is still aligned with the old academic consensus that hunter-gatherers worked far in excess of modern humans' forty-hour week.^[11]

History

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2021)

The industrial revolution made it possible for a larger segment of the population to work year-round, because this labor was not tied to the season and artificial lighting made it possible to work longer each day. Peasants and farm laborers moved from rural areas to work in urban factories, and working time during the year increased significantly.^[13] Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as long as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week were practiced in some industrial sites.^{[citation needed]}

Over the 20th century, work hours shortened by almost half, partly due to rising wages brought about by renewed economic growth and competition for skilled workers, with a supporting role from trade unions, collective bargaining, and progressive legislation. The workweek, in most of the industrialized world, dropped steadily, to about 40 hours after World War II. The limitation of working hours is also proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,^[14] International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,^[15] and European Social Charter.^[16] The decline continued at a faster pace in Europe: for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000. In 1995, China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays (though this is not widely practiced). Working hours in industrializing economies like South Korea, though still much higher than the leading industrial countries, are also declining steadily.

Technology has also continued to improve worker productivity, permitting standards of living to rise as hours decline.^[17] In developed economies, as the time needed to manufacture goods has declined, more working hours have become available to provide services, resulting in a shift of much of the workforce between sectors.

Economic growth in monetary terms tends to be concentrated in health care, education, government, criminal justice, corrections, and other activities rather than those that contribute directly to the production of material goods.^{[citation needed]}

In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours.^[18]

Gradual decrease

Most countries in the developed world have seen average hours worked decrease significantly.^[19][20] For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week.^[21] Today the average hours worked in the U.S. is around 33,^[22] with the average man employed full-time for 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time for 7.9 hours per work day.^[23] The front runners for lowest average weekly work hours are the Netherlands with 27 hours,^[24] and France with 30 hours.^[25] In a 2011 report of 26 OECD countries, Germany had the lowest average working hours per week at 25.6 hours.^[26]

The New Economics Foundation has recommended moving to a 21-hour standard work week to address problems with unemployment, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, overworking, family care, and the general lack of free time.^[27][28][29] Bill Schaninger writing for McKinsey & Company has put forward a similar proposal of a 20-hour workweek.^[30] Others, such as the historian Rutger Bregman, have argued that a 15-hour work week is reachable by 2030 and British sociologist Peter Fleming has proposed a three-day work-week.^[31] Actual work week lengths have been falling in the developed world.^[32]

Factors that have contributed to lowering average work hours and increasing standard of living have been:

• Technological advances in efficiency such as mechanization, robotics and information technology.
• More women participating in the workforce and fewer homemakers
• Dropping fertility rates leading to fewer children needing support

Recent articles^[33][34] supporting a four-day week have argued that reduced work hours would increase consumption and invigorate the economy. However, other articles state that consumption would decrease, which could reduce the environmental impact.^[35][36][37] Other arguments for the four-day week include improvements to workers' level of education (due to having extra time to take classes and courses) and improvements to workers' health (less work-related stress and extra time for exercise). Reduced hours also save money on day care costs and transportation, which in turn helps the environment with less carbon-related emissions. These benefits increase workforce productivity on a per-hour basis.

Workweek structure

The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday to Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. Sunday is set aside in the western world because it is the Christian sabbath.

The traditional American business hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, representing a workweek of five eight-hour days comprising 40 hours in total. These are the origin of the phrase 9-to-5, used to describe a conventional and possibly tedious job.^[38] Negatively used, it connotes a tedious or unremarkable occupation. The phrase also indicates that a person is an employee, usually in a large company, rather than an entrepreneur or self-employed. More neutrally, it connotes a job with stable hours and low career risk, but still a position of subordinate employment. The actual time at work often varies between 35 and 48^{[citation needed]} hours in practice due to some employers counting breaks as part of the 40 hours and others not. In many traditional white collar positions, employees were required to be in the office during these hours to take orders from the bosses, hence the relationship between this phrase and subordination. Workplace hours have become more flexible, but the phrase is still commonly used even in situations where the term does not apply literally.^{[citation needed]}

Average annual hours per worker

The following list is the average annual hours worked by participants in the labor force of the OECD member states.^[39] As of 2022, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica ranked the highest number of hours worked per year. Greece ranked the highest In EU with 1886 average hours per year, while Germany ranked the lowest with 1340 average hours worked respectively.^[40][41] Japan and Canada ranked lowest amongst non-European countries.

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Working_hours
Text je dostupný za podmienok Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 Unported; prípadne za ďalších podmienok. Podrobnejšie informácie nájdete na stránke Podmienky použitia.

---



---

www.astronomia.sk | www.biologia.sk | www.botanika.sk | www.dejiny.sk | www.economy.sk | www.elektrotechnika.sk | www.estetika.sk | www.farmakologia.sk | www.filozofia.sk | Fyzika | www.futurologia.sk | www.genetika.sk | www.chemia.sk | www.lingvistika.sk | www.politologia.sk | www.psychologia.sk | www.sexuologia.sk | www.sociologia.sk | www.veda.sk I www.zoologia.sk

---

Average labor hours per worker in OECD countries

Code	Country	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2005	2010	2015	2020	2022
AUS	Australia	...	...	...	...	1853	1852	1808	1778	1751	1683	1707
AUT	Austria	...	...	...	...	...	1675	1632	1552	1495	1400	1443
BEL	Belgium	...	...	1883	1707	1663	1589	1578	1574	1575	1481	1525
BGR	Bulgaria	...	...	...	...	...	1640	1659	1645	1644	1605	1618
CAN	Canada	...	...	1925	1827	1797	1787	1745	1715	1712	1644	1686
CHL	Chile	...	...	...	...	2422	2263	2157	2070	1994	1825	1962
COL	Colombia	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	2194	...	2405
CRI	Costa Rica	...	...	...	...	2358	2362	2352	2243	2148	1913	2149
HRV	Croatia	...	...	...	...	...	1922	1926