According to the Office for National Statistics, full-time workers average around 37.0 hours per week, part-time workers average around 15.5 hours per week and just under a fifth of people in employment work more than 45 hours a week. By EU standards this is a high proportion of ‘long hours’ workers, though other developed countries such as Australia, Japan and the United States have more than the UK. A recent report confirms that the UK is amongst the countries that work the longest hours.
Our report, Working hours in the recession, found that the number of long-hour workers has started to rise again following the loss of nearly 1 million jobs and a shift to part-time working since the start of the economic downturn.