Eurostat · 34 countries · 2025
In every country measured, women work fewer paid hours than men.
37.3usual hours a week, main job · European Union · 2025
Not most countries. Not almost all. All 34 of them, without a single exception — which is not true of any other figure on this site.
These are usual hours in the main job, paid work only. Second jobs are not counted, and unpaid work is not counted at all, which is exactly where a large part of the difference between men and women goes.
The map
Where the working week is longest
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How long is your week?
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This counts paid hours in one job. Research on time use consistently finds the unpaid hours running the other way, so a smaller number here does not mean a lighter week. We do not have that data on this site, so we will not pretend to settle it.
Every country
All 35 countries, shortest to longest
Sort by any column. The gap column is men minus women, and it is positive in every single row.
| Trend 1983–2025, with breaks | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 33.0 | 37.0 | 28.7 | +8.3 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2006, 2013, 2021. |
| Denmark | 34.6 | 36.5 | 32.4 | +4.1 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2023. |
| Germany | 35.0 | 38.5 | 31.1 | +7.4 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2020, 2021. |
| Norway | 35.8 | 37.8 | 33.7 | +4.1 hours | Trend 1995 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2006, 2021. |
| Switzerland | 35.8 | 40.2 | 31.0 | +9.2 hours | Trend 1996 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2010, 2021. |
| Austria | 35.9 | 39.6 | 31.9 | +7.7 hours | Trend 1995 to 2025. Series breaks in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2021. |
| Ireland | 36.3 | 39.6 | 32.8 | +6.8 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 1998, 2005, 2007, 2017, 2021. |
| Finland | 36.4 | 38.0 | 34.6 | +3.4 hours | Trend 1995 to 2025. Series breaks in 2000, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2021. |
| Belgium | 36.5 | 39.3 | 33.5 | +5.8 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 1999, 2001, 2005, 2011, 2017, 2021. |
| France | 37.2 | 39.3 | 34.9 | +4.4 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2014. |
| Italy | 37.3 | 39.8 | 33.9 | +5.9 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 1992, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2021. |
| Spain | 37.6 | 39.6 | 35.3 | +4.3 hours | Trend 1987 to 2025. Series breaks in 2001, 2005, 2006. |
| Estonia | 37.9 | 38.9 | 36.8 | +2.1 hours | Trend 1997 to 2025. Series breaks in 2000, 2005, 2021. |
| Luxembourg | 38.0 | 40.1 | 35.7 | +4.4 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2015, 2021. |
| Sweden | 38.7 | 39.9 | 37.4 | +2.5 hours | Trend 1995 to 2025. Series breaks in 2001, 2005, 2018, 2021. |
| Iceland | 38.7 | 41.6 | 35.4 | +6.2 hours | Trend 1995 to 2025. Series breaks in 2003, 2005, 2020, 2021. |
| Latvia | 38.8 | 39.4 | 38.1 | +1.3 hours | Trend 1998 to 2025. Series breaks in 2002, 2005, 2021. |
| Lithuania | 39.2 | 39.7 | 38.7 | +1.0 hour | Trend 1998 to 2025. Series breaks in 2002, 2005, 2021. |
| Czechia | 39.3 | 40.6 | 37.8 | +2.8 hours | Trend 1997 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2011, 2021. |
| Hungary | 39.5 | 40.1 | 38.9 | +1.2 hours | Trend 1996 to 2025. Series breaks in 2001, 2005, 2018, 2021. |
| Malta | 39.5 | 40.9 | 37.6 | +3.3 hours | Trend 2000 to 2025. Series breaks in 2004, 2005, 2021. |
| Slovenia | 39.5 | 40.3 | 38.5 | +1.8 hours | Trend 1996 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2021. |
| Slovakia | 39.5 | 40.4 | 38.5 | +1.9 hours | Trend 1998 to 2025. Series breaks in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2011, 2021. |
| Croatia | 39.6 | 40.1 | 39.1 | +1.0 hour | Trend 2002 to 2025. Series breaks in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2021. |
| Cyprus | 39.8 | 41.2 | 38.3 | +2.9 hours | Trend 1999 to 2025. Series breaks in 2005, 2009, 2021. |
| Portugal | 39.8 | 41.2 | 38.3 | +2.9 hours | Trend 1986 to 2025. Series breaks in 1998, 2005, 2011, 2021. |
| Bulgaria | 39.9 | 40.0 | 39.8 | +0.2 hours | Trend 2000 to 2025. Series breaks in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2019, 2021, 2024. |
| Romania | 40.0 | 40.1 | 39.8 | +0.3 hours | Trend 1997 to 2025. Series breaks in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2021. |
| Poland | 40.1 | 41.1 | 38.9 | +2.2 hours | Trend 2001 to 2025. Series breaks in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2019, 2021. |
| North Macedonia | 40.7 | 41.2 | 40.1 | +1.1 hours | Trend 2006 to 2025. Series breaks in 2021. |
| Greece | 41.0 | 42.7 | 38.8 | +3.9 hours | Trend 1983 to 2025. Series breaks in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2021. |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 41.2 | 41.5 | 40.8 | +0.7 hours | Trend 2021 to 2025. |
| Serbia | 41.7 | 42.4 | 40.9 | +1.5 hours | Trend 2010 to 2025. Series breaks in 2014, 2021. |
| Türkiye | 44.1 | 46.0 | 40.4 | +5.6 hours | Trend 2006 to 2025. Series breaks in 2014, 2021. |
| Montenegro 2020 | 44.4 | 45.5 | 43.1 | +2.4 hours | Trend 2011 to 2020. |
The gap is men minus women, so a positive number means women reach the midpoint earlier. A year next to a country means Eurostat has no 2025 figure for it, and the row shows that year instead. Trend lines are not drawn across series breaks (the small notches): in 2024 the EU Labour Force Survey was reorganized, and 1 of 35 countries carry a break there.
What the numbers say
A rule without exceptions, and a country on its own
34 out of 34
Every country in the dataset reports a shorter usual week for women than for men, by 3.6 hours on average. The widest is Switzerland at 9.2 hours. No other breakdown on this site runs one way everywhere.
hours in the Netherlands, the shortest week in Europe and more than an hour below the next country.
The spread is 11.1 hours from end to end, and it does not follow wealth either: the big economies sit at Netherlands 33.0, Germany 35.0, France 37.2, Italy 37.3, Spain 37.6, Poland 40.1. The longest weeks are in the south-east, the shortest in the north-west, which is the same line that runs through household size — pointing the other way.
Method
How this is measured
Published by Eurostat. Nothing here is estimated on top of what they publish.
- What the figure is
- The hours a person usually works in their main job, for employed people aged 20 to 64, from the European Union Labour Force Survey. Usual hours, not hours actually worked in a given week.
- What it is not
- It is not total hours worked, not including second jobs, and not including unpaid work. It is one number per country, so there is no percentile in it.
- Coverage
- 34 countries have a figure for 2025. Montenegro (2020) stopped reporting earlier and are shown at their most recent year, hatched on the map and labelled in the table. The United States, Canada and Australia are not in this dataset.
- Series breaks
- Eurostat flags a break in 2024, in or just before the latest year, so no comparison with the past is shown on this page. A figure that looks like a trend across a break is worse than no trend at all.
- Dataset Eurostat
lfsa_ewhuis, Average usual weekly hours worked in the main job by professional status, full-time/part-time employment and occupation - Series 1983 to 2025
- Last updated by Eurostat 2026-09-10
- Retrieved 2026-10-24
- DOI10.2908/LFSA_EWHUIS
- Eurostat metadataexplanatory texts
Licence: Eurostat data may be reused, including commercially, with attribution. How we handle data is on the method page.