Live data from Hacker News

Average Working Hours in Europe

euronews.com

1–10 of 24 posts

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#3
post #2

Permanent employment in Netherlands must be provide both full and part time options, hence to suppressant effect on mean hours worked.

Also, in most dutch both parents have a job. As daycare is very expensive for some reason, both parents work one day less to take care of their children at home.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#4
It would be useful (although more difficult) to know how many effective hours people put in every week.

I have a real big difficulty believing that most white-collar people can get over 20 effective hours a week, irregardless of their number of office hours. I also suspect that there's no correlation between office hours and effective hours.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#5

It would be useful (although more difficult) to know how many effective hours people put in every week. I have a real big difficulty believing that most white-collar people can get over 20 effective hours a week, irregardless of their number of office hours. I also suspect that there's no correlation between office hours and effective hours.

Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "butt-in-chair" time is 36.5 hours per week.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#6
The first graph in the article is a bit misleading, as it muddles together the full-time working hours and the amount and fraction of part-time work.

Fortunately, lower down in the article there's a graph that shows the full-time working hours per country.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#7
post #3
post #2

Permanent employment in Netherlands must be provide both full and part time options, hence to suppressant effect on mean hours worked.

Also, in most dutch both parents have a job. As daycare is very expensive for some reason, both parents work one day less to take care of their children at home.

Decent daycare is expensive, period. Think of it: if you want an employee for every ten kids (norms often don’t even allow this for toddlers), parents will have to pay ⅒ of the salary of such an employee.

Add in the cost of a daycare center (typically better equipped than the average children’s home), its administration, etc, and there’s no way daycare can be cheap.

The only way to make it seem cheap to parents is by subsidizing it.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#8

It would be useful (although more difficult) to know how many effective hours people put in every week. I have a real big difficulty believing that most white-collar people can get over 20 effective hours a week, irregardless of their number of office hours. I also suspect that there's no correlation between office hours and effective hours.

Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "butt-in-chair" time is 36.5 hours per week.

Ha, come to Austria where your break times are not included in your working time, so if your contract is 38,5h per week, then that's your expected butt-in-chair time as that doesn't include any breaks.

The mandatory 30min lunch break and other coffee breaks are not included in that, but as extra in your own non-billable time, while the clock is not running, so you could easily be spending 40+h/week in the office if your company insists on keeping track of your time, which some do and also don't offer WFH so they can nickel and dime you on your butt-in-chair time which they can't if you're at home.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#9
post #3
post #2

Permanent employment in Netherlands must be provide both full and part time options, hence to suppressant effect on mean hours worked.

Also, in most dutch both parents have a job. As daycare is very expensive for some reason, both parents work one day less to take care of their children at home.

Yeah can confirm, both my partner and I each take a day off because day care only gives us 3 days. This is actually preferable as day care is almost a 2nd rent at just 3 days a week.

There are some policy changes in the works to more heavily subsidize day care costs, but I think they won't kick in until next year or something.

Re: Average Working Hours in Europe

#10

It would be useful (although more difficult) to know how many effective hours people put in every week. I have a real big difficulty believing that most white-collar people can get over 20 effective hours a week, irregardless of their number of office hours. I also suspect that there's no correlation between office hours and effective hours.

Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "butt-in-chair" time is 36.5 hours per week.

Honest question: as a person in-between academia and industry (sorry, I stalked you a little bit), what are your views on the percentage of actual, hands-on work happening in those 36.5 hours? I have a theory that in Sweden you must divide your work into 80/20: 80% self-advertising (bragging in meetings, etc.) and 20% actual work. Anything more and you’re wasting your time and losing the race.
Post reply on HN