Quick Answer: Official rankings often assign the title of “longest workweek” to Mexico or Colombia, but the reality varies depending on whether you are tracking legal limits, actual hours worked or hidden labor in an informal economy. Leading the pack of developed countries is Colombia with an average of 44.2 hours a week, followed closely by Mexico at 43.5 hours per week says the OECD. But if you count the unregulated “informal” economy, there are countries such as Bhutan and United Arab Emirates (the latter country for migrant populations) where workers routinely clock over 50 to 60 hours a week.
Breaking Down the Global “Long Hours” Rankings
If you now feel overworked and put upon but are not working 50 hours a week, it’s because you’re looking for an objective baseline through which to measure your experience against the apparent crazy of everyone else. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) consistently lists Latin America and South Asia among the best.
Yet the raw numbers frequently obscure a “Productivity Paradox.” For instance, workers in Germany put in some of the fewest hours in the world (about 1,340 per year), but are more than twice as productive on average for an hour of work than are Mexicans who work close to 2,200 hours. That’s because “longest” usually doesn’t mean “best,” or even longest (as in, in the long run most profitable).
If you Like Work-Life Balance Here’s How to use the Data
If your objective is to work fewer hours on your own than you’re doing now, comparing yourself to the “hardest working” country can actually be a pitfall. It promulgates a “race to the bottom” psychology. Now, look at the “Effort to Output” ratio.
- Audit your “Shadow Work”: Lifehacker reports that the average desk jockey only logs 3 hours on focused work. They long for the “always-on” culture: the burden of being made to check emails at 9:00 p.m.
- The 50-Hour Ceiling: Stanford University researchers have found that worker productivity falls off dramatically after 50 hours a week. Beyond 55 hours, productivity drops so much that putting in any more hours would be pointless.
- The “Focus-Block” StrategyRather than focusing on longer, work more for “deep work” time blocks. A four-hour uninterrupted span of focus will often be more productive than ten hours behind a desk full of meetings and distractions.
Digital Nomads and Expats: Deciding Where to Go Next
If you’re considering moving to or working in a country, don’t just consider average work time. You need to separate Statutory Hours (what the law says) from Cultural Expectations (what your boss demands).
- The Latin American Trap: There are very long working hours that in part have to do with a culture in which you need to be seen at your desk to be considered a good worker, whatever you’re doing.
- The Myth of “Work-Hard, Play-Hard”: Some countries where they work long hours, such as South Korea, have high suicide rates and low birthrates due to working exhaustion. If you go, negotiate a contract with “capped” hours if possible, lest ye be consumed by the local corporate culture.
- The Safe Havens: Think Denmark or Norway. These countries not only have short weeks; they also have a cultural “right to disconnect” in which leaving the office at 4 p.m. isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.
For HR Leaders: Long Week’s Hidden Cost
If someone leads a team, wearing “long hours” as a badge of honor is really just a financial mistake. When a company or team has high stress, “Quiet Quitting” and turnover are common outcomes that waste far more money than it would take to hire an additional employee.
- Measure Impact, Not Time: Transform your management from into clock-watching” to mile-stone tracking. If an employee has completed their weekly work in 30 hours, don’t give them two days to recover; let them go home.
- Health is Wealth: Overworking causes chronic stress, which weakens the immune system. A team will ultimately lose more time to a burnout-induced error or sick day than it gained from working those extra 20 hours.
For Researchers: Why the Rankings Are So Often Wrong
The “official” figures based on ILO (International Labour Organization) and OECD calculations are very incomplete because they depend on self-reported data as well as formal tax records.
- The Informal Economy: In a number of developing nations 80 percent of the work force is “informal” (street vendors, day laborers). These individuals are known to regularly work from dawn till dusk, seven days a week, but they don’t make the “Longest Work Week” lists.
- The GDP Correlation: There’s close to a one-to-one, negative correlation between a country’s GDP per capita and its average work hours. The richer a country becomes, the more it buys back its time. (And long work weeks generally are a symptom of economic inefficiency, not a “strong work ethic.”
For the Curious: The “Most ‘Extreme’ Work Cultures”
“They are not going to these big banks anymore, but if you look for the outliers, they are outside of a standard office job.”
- Bhutan: This week’s ILO data showed that Bhutan has one of the largest shares of those working in excess of 49 hours a week.
- The “996” Culture: Not a country-wide one, but China’s tech industry was known for the 996 schedule (9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days/week). While this has been banned under Chinese law, the social pressure is still intense.
- The “Karoshi” Factor: In Japan, people coined the term Karoshi (death from overwork) when this system of long hours rose to a public health crisis. That led to “Premium Friday” programs, with mixed results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What countries have the longest work weeks, officially according to the OECD?
Colombia is at the top with an average of 44.2 hours per week, closely followed by Mexico with 43.5 on the list according to OECD figures. Yet in the unofficial economies of nations such as Bhutan and the United Arab Emirates full-time work weeks can stretch past 50-60 hours.
Is there a point in working longer hours for more productivity?
No. Studies from Stanford University show that productivity per hour declines sharply when a person works more than 50 hours a week. After 55 hours, it becomes basically pointless to keep working. For instance, workers in Germany toil fewer hours than those in Mexico but produce much more per hour.
What do statutory hours and person expectations mean?
The statutory hours are formal limits set by a government and the cultural expectations are the unofficial norms that make people feel like they should work longer. This can include “presenteeism” in which workers believe they have to be present at their desks to prove their worth, and the “always-on” culture of surveying digital communications outside work hours.
Why are national ranks for work hours generally seen as incomplete?
Formal rankings typically account only for official tax payments and self‐reporting, overlooking the informal economy. In many poor countries much of the work force is daytime labor or street work, and they all work beyond recorded statistics.
What are the downsides of a long week for employees and companies?
Long hours are also bad for workers, leading to chronic stress, burnout, and health problems such as “Karoshi” (death from overwork). For businesses, such environments breed “Quiet Quitting,” a high churn rate and the higher costs of mistakes and sick days: making people work long hours is a financial risk rather than benefit.
References
- OECD (2023): Mean actual hours worked per worker. This dataset would be a primary sort for formal economies and it reveals Colombia and Mexico leading the way in total logged hours per year.
- International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT, 2024): Hours of Work. The ILO database has figures on “excessive hours” (longer than 48 hours a week), and by this measurement, South Asia and Southeast Asia can be seen as regions with the world’s most overworked schedules.
- John Pencavel (Stanford University, 2014): The Productivity of Working Hours. This study also looked at munitions workers and settled for the hours up to 50-55/week and output is almost flat past this point, these two facts confirm the fact that long work hours have “diminishing returns” on productivity.
- InterNations (2023): Expatriate Insider Survey. The annual list of work-life balance – as seen from the eyes of foreign professionals – has become notorious for clustering Nordic countries on the top, and East Asian/Latin American countries at the bottom.
- World Bank (2023): Database on the Informal Economy. That helps explain why official work-hour statistics substantially undercount labor in developing countries where informal work is more common.
