Europeans are working fewer and fewer hours, especially men

There is a lot of debate in Spain around the total hours worked, usually to clarify the employment records of recent months. Two coinciding realities stir this conversation: never before has the Spanish labor market employed so many people, 21.27 million according to the latest Active Population Survey; but the total hours worked (608 million) are not in record numbers. Compared to the third quarter of 2008, employment has grown by 3.5% and hours worked have fallen by 3.8%. This means that the hours worked by each employee on average have decreased over the years. But this does not happen only in Spain, according to a study recently published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that focuses on European labor markets. Furthermore, he points out that it is men and students who are clearly behind this trend to work fewer hours.

“Three years after the coronavirus crisis, employment and total hours have fully recovered, but average hours per worker have not,” indicate the authors of Analyzing the decrease in the average hours worked in Europe, which focuses on the comparison with the pre-pandemic period, but also looks back. This trend, they conclude, “is not cyclical, but predominantly structural, extending the trend that preceded the pandemic into the long term” and “it seems unlikely” that it will be reversed in the future.

As the report based on Eurostat data points out, the total hours worked in Europe It is now at figures similar to those of 2019 and in some cases below, but not the median number of hours worked per employee, slightly below 37 hours per week. This drop in hours worked is preceded by decades in the same line: “Average working hours in developed economies have experienced a long-term decreasing trend since the 19th century, reducing by approximately half between 1870 and 2000 in Germany, For example. More broadly, average working hours in OECD countries have declined by about 0.5% each year between the 1870s and the early 2000s.

The contraction in average working time is concentrated in three groups: among young people, men in general, and particularly men with young children. “In the case of young people, an increase in the incidence of part-time workers who are also enrolled in education may explain the decline. For men overall, including those with young children, the decline affects both full-time and part-time workers. “This finding is surprisingly consistent across all European countries,” the IMF study indicates. “The reductions in actual hours coincide with the reductions in desired hours,” add the authors (Diva Astinova, Romain Duval, Niels-Jakob H. Hansen, Ben Park, Ippei Shibata and Frederik Toscani), who consider that these reductions are due to personal preferences of these groups of employees.

The analysis highlights that men continue to work more hours on average than women (them 39.9 hours on average per week, compared to 34.7 for them), “but this gender gap has narrowed over time, as has the gender gap in the employment rate.” Behind this fact is the fact that women continue to assume most of the care, usually out of obligation. What's more, the hours worked by women with children have increased slightly. In Spain, although they make up less than half of the workforce, they account for 73% of the bias. Of the total part-time workers for care or family obligations, 89% are women. And of the total without a full day because they have not found it, they are 71%.

With the focus on other demographic groups, the IMF study also highlights that older workers (55 to 64 years old) and elderly workers (65 years and older) “have seen an increase in their employment shares as Effective retirement ages increased in most European countries, but average hours also decreased for them.”

The study also points out that contractions in working time are more pronounced in richer countries than in those with a lower GDP. “These results are consistent with a dominant role of the income effect over the substitution effect in determining the worker's labor supply in the intensive margin, as widely documented in the literature.” A look at Eurostat's present tense data shows this reality: in Serbia they work on average 42.2 hours a week; in the Netherlands, 31.1 hours.

Thus, the report anticipates that the average hours worked will continue to fall in European countries, at a rate that will depend on productivity and wage growth, “at variable speeds between countries according to their trajectories of economic convergence.” The more productivity and added value in economic activity, the more pronounced contractions are expected. “In the medium term, most economic forecasts, including those of the IMF, foresee modest increases in productivity for economies close to the technological frontier, especially in advanced Europe,” so the reduction in hours would also be “modest,” according to The document. In the long term, the IMF warns of the key role that artificial intelligence or the measures adopted to contain global warming will play.

PSOE and Sumar committed in their Government agreement to reduce the ordinary working day, from the current 40 hours to 38.5 hours in 2024 and to 37.5 in 2025. By doing so, Spain would join some European countries that have reduced officially the day, although the 40-hour work week remains the most widespread norm.

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