There’s an old joke: are you working hard, or hardly working?

“Hard work” is difficult to measure, but it is possible to know who’s working the longest.

This heatmap, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, visualizes the average hours Europeans work each week by country, as sourced from Eurostat’s Labor Force Survey (2023).

The dataset covers employed persons aged 20–64 in a “main occupation” and includes full and part time work.

The Balkans Work the Longest in Europe

Less wealthy countries of Europe (by per capita GDP) tend to have longer work weeks. For example, people in the Balkans—including Türkiye, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Greece, and Romania—all put in an average of 40+ hours a week at their main jobs.

Rank
Country
Average Weekly
Hours Worked (2023)
1
🇹🇷 Türkiye
44
2
🇷🇸 Serbia
42
3
🇧🇦 Bosnia & Herzegovina
41
4
🇬🇷 Greece
40
5
🇷🇴 Romania
40
6
🇵🇱 Poland
39
7
🇧🇬 Bulgaria
39
8
🇨🇾 Cyprus
39
9
🇱🇻 Latvia
38
10
🇱🇹 Lithuania
38
11
🇭🇷 Croatia
38
12
🇸🇮 Slovenia
38
13
🇨🇿 Czechia
38
14
🇭🇺 Hungary
38
15
🇵🇹 Portugal
38
16
🇸🇰 Slovakia
38
17
🇲🇹 Malta
37
18
🇪🇪 Estonia
36
19
🇪🇸 Spain
36
20
🇮🇸 Iceland
36
21
🇨🇭 Switzerland
36
22
🇮🇹 Italy
36
23
🇫🇷 France
36
24
🇸🇪 Sweden
36
25
🇮🇪 Ireland
36
26
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
35
27
🇧🇪 Belgium
35
28
🇫🇮 Finland
35
29
🇩🇰 Denmark
34
30
🇩🇪 Germany
34
31
🇳🇴 Norway
34
32
🇦🇹 Austria
34
33
🇳🇱 Netherlands
32
N/A
🇪🇺 EU (2020)
36

Note: Figures rounded.

In contrast, those in the Netherlands work 32 hours per week on average. This disparity between Eastern and Western Europe is not new. Data from 2008 reflects largely the same trends.

Another find in the Labor Force Survey is how weekly working hours differ by occupation. Those in agriculture, forestry, and fishery have the longest workweeks (44 hours).

Rank
Occupation
Average Weekly Hours Worked (2023)
1
🌾 Agricultural, forestry & fishery
44
2
💼 Managers
42
3
🪖 Armed forces
40
4
🔧 Trades
38
5
🏭 Plant and machinery operators
38
6
🔬 Technicians
35
7
👩‍🏫 Professionals
35
8
🛎️ Service and sales
34
9
🖇️ Clerical support
33
10
🔤 Elementary occupations
31

Note: Figures rounded. Occupational average work hours accessible when customizing filters in source dataset.

When cross-referencing both datasets, some correlations emerge. For example, in Türkiye and Serbia, the two longest-working nations in Europe, nearly 20% of the workforce is employed in agriculture.

Similarly, Bosnia (3rd) and Romania (5th) also have roughly the same distribution (20%) of the workforce in agriculture.

Meanwhile, Greece’s average hours are about to go up: the government has introduced a six-day workweek for certain industries, in a bid to boost productivity.