Over 57% of business leaders and 6% of employees in France work 49 hours or more per week. Thus, French workers are among the most statutory 48-hour weekly workers in Europe.
If France has one of the lowest employment rates in Europe, people who work don’t count their hours. That’s what stands out From a study published on Monday by Eurostat which measures the rates of “very heavy workers” in the various countries of the European Union. These are workers between the ages of 15 and 64 who work 49 or more hours per week, including overtime.
According to these data compiled by Eurostat, France comes first after Greece in terms of the percentage of workers working more than 49 hours per week. While the average is 7.3% in the European Union, in France it is 10.2%. Only Greece has a higher rate (12.6%). Above all, France is one of the few countries where this rate increased in 2022 and then rose from 10 to 10.2% while it fell slightly on average across the European Union as a whole.
The proportion of heavy workers is highest mainly in Latin countries. Cyprus (9.7%), Italy (9.4%) and Portugal (9.4%) are the countries with the highest percentages after France. On the contrary, Northern European countries have fewer hard-working people. The rates are 6% in Finland and Germany, 5.8% in the Netherlands, 5.6% in Denmark, 4.9% in Norway.
6.3% of French employees after 49 hours
Business leaders (not subject to regulations regarding working time) are by far the most employed among workers who work more than 49 hours per week. This brings the percentage to 57.1% in France, the highest percentage in Europe after Belgium (59.4%). There are significant differences with other EU countries. In Germany, they account for 46% of business leaders in this situation, 45.8% in Italy, 37.8% in Spain and 33.2% in Portugal.
If French bosses don’t count their hours, French employees are also among those with the highest rate of heavy workers in Europe. As a reminder, legislation in Europe sets the maximum working hours for employees at 48 hours per week, including overtime. However, 6.3% of French employees work 49 hours or more. This puts them above the European average (3.8%) as well as most countries except Cyprus and Portugal.
Those employees who exceed the legal working time are on a per diem basis, a system that allows employers to pay employees based on the number of days worked per year and without a weekly reference. It mainly concerns executives who are not subject to maximum shifts of 48 hours a week or 10 hours a day.
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