7 ms·

Average Working Hours in Europe

hunglee2 3y ago
Permanent employment in Netherlands must be provide both full and part time options, hence to suppressant effect on mean hours worked.
- Kmandr 3y ago
  Also, in most dutch both parents have a job. As daycare is very expensive for some reason, both parents work one day less to take care of their children at home.
  - Someone 3y ago
    Decent daycare is expensive, period. Think of it: if you want an employee for every ten kids (norms often don’t even allow this for toddlers), parents will have to pay ⅒ of the salary of such an employee. Add in the cost of a daycare center (typically better equipped than the average children’s home), its administration, etc, and there’s no way daycare can be cheap. The only way to make it seem cheap to parents is by subsidizing it.
    - WeylandYutani 3y ago
      My mother was a pioneer in the 1980s. She worked full time. In those days the government did fully subsidize day care for everyone. But eventually as the economic goal of getting women into the workforce was reached they decided it was no longer necessary.
  - camgunz 3y ago
    Yeah can confirm, both my partner and I each take a day off because day care only gives us 3 days. This is actually preferable as day care is almost a 2nd rent at just 3 days a week. There are some policy changes in the works to more heavily subsidize day care costs, but I think they won't kick in until next year or something.
    - bojan 3y ago
      Those changes won't kick in until at least 2027, but even then, it's very questionable how feasible it is, considering there aren't enough teachers to cover the demand even at these exorbitant end-user prices.
      - camgunz 3y ago
        Yeah I think we did the math and our day care costs ~11 euros an hour, which is pretty low if it was 1 person's income, but there are like 6-8 kids in the group every day, so it's something like 75/hr, which is maybe adequate: 4 groups pulls 600k/yr, you burn 360k on staff (6 nannies across 4 groups at 50k each plus an admin), rent/supplies/tech is 100k/yr let's just say, so your margin is 25%. Even if we're way off here, that's a lot of margin. All that said, I don't really get why day care is privatized while school is public. I mean I do: it's vestigial from when we didn't allow women to work; what I mean is that if we want more women to work full time--and I know that we do because every month it seems there's yet another thinkpiece about why women in the Netherlands won't work more hours and policies floated to address it--it seems like the main things to do are give more partner leave and nationalize day care. My partner had this great idea where both parents should get a year off with pay (maybe 70%, whatever), which is a good idea in general for couples but also would dramatically lower the load on day cares. Either way, childcare is a huge societal enterprise; we're not gonna get out of paying through the nose for it. Basically, you can either have a low fertility rate, a very male workforce, or raised taxes for childcare; there's not really another option.
    - amadeuspagel 3y ago
      Subsidizing demand is never the solution.
darthrupert 3y ago
It would be useful (although more difficult) to know how many effective hours people put in every week. I have a real big difficulty believing that most white-collar people can get over 20 effective hours a week, irregardless of their number of office hours. I also suspect that there's no correlation between office hours and effective hours.
- anticristi 3y ago
  Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "butt-in-chair" time is 36.5 hours per week.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    Ha, come to Austria where your break times are not included in your working time, so if your contract is 38,5h per week, then that's your expected butt-in-chair time as that doesn't include any breaks. The mandatory 30min lunch break and other coffee breaks are not included in that, but as extra in your own non-billable time, while the clock is not running, so you could easily be spending 40+h/week in the office if your company insists on keeping track of your time, which some do and also don't offer WFH so they can nickel and dime you on your butt-in-chair time which they can't if you're at home.
    - anticristi 3y ago
      Another Austrian work quirk that always gets me: 14 salaries.
      - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        Yeah, you're not actually getting paid 2 extra salaries, it's just your yearly salary divided by 14 instead of 12. The only extra si you pay less tax on those 2 extra salaries so you get more money in your pocket before summer and Christmas.
      - 3y ago
sys42590 3y ago
The first graph in the article is a bit misleading, as it muddles together the full-time working hours and the amount and fraction of part-time work. Fortunately, lower down in the article there's a graph that shows the full-time working hours per country.
kioleanu 3y ago
This is also a cultural thing. I come from Romania, where it is (was before the pandemic?) very uncommon for people to work part time. The expectation when having children was to have the grandparents take care of them during the week until they are independent. Otherwise to hire a full time nanny until the kid goes to kindergarten and then have the child go to kindergarten or after schools for about 10 hours per day, with kindergartens closing late in the evening. Now I live in Germany, where there is little reliance on grandparents, children don’t stay that long in kindergarten (they close between 15:00 and 16:30) each day. This, to my understanding was because the women would assume a housewife role and would have time to take care of children. As the economy shifted and two income started becoming necessary, the society adapted to the old rules, but did not change them. Some people work part time, some work flexible schedules. For most office jobs I’ve seen, it’s easy to have a flexible schedule. My wife starts later and takes care of the kid in the morning, I start earlier and take care of the kid in the afternoon.

Permanent employment in Netherlands must be provide both full and part time options, hence to suppressant effect on mean hours worked.

Kmandr 3y ago
Also, in most dutch both parents have a job. As daycare is very expensive for some reason, both parents work one day less to take care of their children at home.
- Someone 3y ago
  Decent daycare is expensive, period. Think of it: if you want an employee for every ten kids (norms often don’t even allow this for toddlers), parents will have to pay ⅒ of the salary of such an employee. Add in the cost of a daycare center (typically better equipped than the average children’s home), its administration, etc, and there’s no way daycare can be cheap. The only way to make it seem cheap to parents is by subsidizing it.
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    My mother was a pioneer in the 1980s. She worked full time. In those days the government did fully subsidize day care for everyone. But eventually as the economic goal of getting women into the workforce was reached they decided it was no longer necessary.
- camgunz 3y ago
  Yeah can confirm, both my partner and I each take a day off because day care only gives us 3 days. This is actually preferable as day care is almost a 2nd rent at just 3 days a week. There are some policy changes in the works to more heavily subsidize day care costs, but I think they won't kick in until next year or something.
  - bojan 3y ago
    Those changes won't kick in until at least 2027, but even then, it's very questionable how feasible it is, considering there aren't enough teachers to cover the demand even at these exorbitant end-user prices.
    - camgunz 3y ago
      Yeah I think we did the math and our day care costs ~11 euros an hour, which is pretty low if it was 1 person's income, but there are like 6-8 kids in the group every day, so it's something like 75/hr, which is maybe adequate: 4 groups pulls 600k/yr, you burn 360k on staff (6 nannies across 4 groups at 50k each plus an admin), rent/supplies/tech is 100k/yr let's just say, so your margin is 25%. Even if we're way off here, that's a lot of margin. All that said, I don't really get why day care is privatized while school is public. I mean I do: it's vestigial from when we didn't allow women to work; what I mean is that if we want more women to work full time--and I know that we do because every month it seems there's yet another thinkpiece about why women in the Netherlands won't work more hours and policies floated to address it--it seems like the main things to do are give more partner leave and nationalize day care. My partner had this great idea where both parents should get a year off with pay (maybe 70%, whatever), which is a good idea in general for couples but also would dramatically lower the load on day cares. Either way, childcare is a huge societal enterprise; we're not gonna get out of paying through the nose for it. Basically, you can either have a low fertility rate, a very male workforce, or raised taxes for childcare; there's not really another option.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    Subsidizing demand is never the solution.

darthrupert 3y ago

It would be useful (although more difficult) to know how many effective hours people put in every week. I have a real big difficulty believing that most white-collar people can get over 20 effective hours a week, irregardless of their number of office hours. I also suspect that there's no correlation between office hours and effective hours.

anticristi 3y ago
Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "butt-in-chair" time is 36.5 hours per week.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  Ha, come to Austria where your break times are not included in your working time, so if your contract is 38,5h per week, then that's your expected butt-in-chair time as that doesn't include any breaks. The mandatory 30min lunch break and other coffee breaks are not included in that, but as extra in your own non-billable time, while the clock is not running, so you could easily be spending 40+h/week in the office if your company insists on keeping track of your time, which some do and also don't offer WFH so they can nickel and dime you on your butt-in-chair time which they can't if you're at home.
  - anticristi 3y ago
    Another Austrian work quirk that always gets me: 14 salaries.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      Yeah, you're not actually getting paid 2 extra salaries, it's just your yearly salary divided by 14 instead of 12. The only extra si you pay less tax on those 2 extra salaries so you get more money in your pocket before summer and Christmas.
    - 3y ago

sys42590 3y ago

The first graph in the article is a bit misleading, as it muddles together the full-time working hours and the amount and fraction of part-time work. Fortunately, lower down in the article there's a graph that shows the full-time working hours per country.

kioleanu 3y ago

This is also a cultural thing. I come from Romania, where it is (was before the pandemic?) very uncommon for people to work part time. The expectation when having children was to have the grandparents take care of them during the week until they are independent. Otherwise to hire a full time nanny until the kid goes to kindergarten and then have the child go to kindergarten or after schools for about 10 hours per day, with kindergartens closing late in the evening. Now I live in Germany, where there is little reliance on grandparents, children don’t stay that long in kindergarten (they close between 15:00 and 16:30) each day. This, to my understanding was because the women would assume a housewife role and would have time to take care of children. As the economy shifted and two income started becoming necessary, the society adapted to the old rules, but did not change them. Some people work part time, some work flexible schedules. For most office jobs I’ve seen, it’s easy to have a flexible schedule. My wife starts later and takes care of the kid in the morning, I start earlier and take care of the kid in the afternoon.