Eurostat · 32 countries · 2025

A working life is 13.6 years longer in some countries than others.

37.5

years in the labour market · European Union · 2025

Someone turning 15 in the Netherlands can expect 44.0 years of working life. In Türkiye it is 30.4. Same question, 13.6 years apart.

How do your years compare? Nothing you type leaves your browser.

This is an expectation, not a look back at finished careers. Eurostat works it out from how many people of each age are in the labour market right now, the same way life expectancy is built from current death rates. Nobody has to have retired for the figure to exist.

The map

Where working lives are longest

Tap a country, or switch between everyone, men and women.

Not labeled on the map:
The age by which half of young people have left the parental home, 2025. Hatched countries have no figure for 2025; the map shows their most recent year instead, and the table below names that year. Every figure is also in that table.

Your turn

How many years have you worked?

Count the years you have been in work or looking for it. We will place that against what a full working life is expected to be in each country.

Nothing is sent anywhere. Your answer is kept in this browser so the next page already knows it, and you can clear it at any time.

What this comparison is not

Your own years are a count of what has happened. The country figure is an expectation for someone starting out today. Comparing them tells you how far along you are against a full working life as it currently looks — not whether you are ahead or behind anybody, and not what your own total will be.

Every country

All 34 countries, shortest to longest

Sort by any column. The gap column is men minus women, so a positive number means men are expected to work longer.

Age by which half of young people have left the parental home. 32 countries at 2025; 2 shown at their most recent year instead.
Trend 2000–2025, with breaks
Montenegro 2020 30.3 33.4 27.2 +6.2 years Trend 2011 to 2020.
Türkiye 30.4 39.5 20.7 +18.8 years Trend 2009 to 2025.
North Macedonia 31.8 36.3 27.0 +9.3 years Trend 2006 to 2025.
Romania 32.7 36.0 29.1 +6.9 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Italy 33.0 37.3 28.4 +8.9 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Bulgaria 34.6 35.9 33.3 +2.6 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Croatia 35.1 36.3 33.8 +2.5 years Trend 2002 to 2025.
Greece 35.3 38.5 31.8 +6.7 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Serbia 35.5 38.1 32.7 +5.4 years Trend 2010 to 2025.
Luxembourg 35.6 37.2 33.8 +3.4 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Belgium 35.7 37.6 33.7 +3.9 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Poland 35.9 37.9 33.9 +4.0 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Slovakia 36.1 37.8 34.4 +3.4 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Spain 36.8 38.5 35.1 +3.4 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Slovenia 37.2 38.3 36.1 +2.2 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
France 37.5 38.7 36.2 +2.5 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Hungary 37.5 39.0 35.8 +3.2 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Czechia 38.1 40.3 35.7 +4.6 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Latvia 38.1 37.7 38.6 −0.9 years Trend 2002 to 2025.
Lithuania 38.6 38.0 39.3 −1.3 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Austria 39.1 40.8 37.4 +3.4 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Malta 39.2 42.2 35.9 +6.3 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Cyprus 39.5 42.1 36.7 +5.4 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Portugal 39.7 40.6 38.9 +1.7 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Finland 40.1 40.4 39.7 +0.7 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Germany 40.2 41.8 38.5 +3.3 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Ireland 40.7 43.4 37.9 +5.5 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Norway 41.4 42.9 39.9 +3.0 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Estonia 41.5 41.1 41.8 −0.7 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Denmark 42.6 44.5 40.6 +3.9 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Switzerland 42.8 44.5 41.1 +3.4 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Sweden 43.4 44.5 42.3 +2.2 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Netherlands 44.0 45.9 41.9 +4.0 years Trend 2000 to 2025.
Iceland 2024 46.5 48.7 44.1 +4.6 years Trend 2000 to 2024.

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 the EU Labour Force Survey was reorganized, and 0 of 34 countries carry a break there.

What the numbers say

Working lives got longer almost everywhere

26

of 27 countries added at least 0.5 years to their working life between 2000 and 2025. The largest gains were in Malta (+10.3 years), Hungary (+10.0 years), Netherlands (+8.5 years) .

2000–2025, no series break
1

country went the other way: Romania, down 3.3 years.

the exception
29

of 32 countries expect a shorter working life for women than for men, by 4.1 years on average.

2025

Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia reverse it

In all three countries women are expected to spend longer in the labour market than men. Everywhere else the gap runs the other way, widest in Türkiye at 18.8 years.

the exception to the rule

The spread between the shortest and the longest working life narrowed from 12.3 years to 11.3 years over those 25 years. Countries are not converging on a shared number so much as the slowest ones are catching up: not one country stayed within half a year of where it started.

Method

How this is measured

Published by Eurostat. Nothing here is estimated on top of what they publish.

What the figure is
The number of years a 15-year-old can expect to spend in the labour market — working or looking for work — if today's participation rates by age stay as they are. It is built the way life expectancy is: from current rates, not from finished lives.
What it is not
It is not a record of how long people actually worked, and not a retirement age. It is not a distribution either, so no percentile can be calculated from it: Eurostat publishes one number per country, and we will not dress that up as a position among individuals.
Coverage
32 countries have a figure for 2025. Iceland (2024), 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
None. This is the only Eurostat series behind this site with an unbroken run — 2000 to 2025 — which is why this page can show how things changed and the others cannot.
  • Dataset Eurostat lfsi_dwl_a, Duration of working life
  • Series 2000 to 2025
  • Last updated by Eurostat 2026-04-17
  • Retrieved 2026-10-24
  • DOI 10.2908/LFSI_DWL_A
  • Eurostat metadata explanatory texts

Licence: Eurostat data may be reused, including commercially, with attribution. How we handle data is on the method page.