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Latest News

UK has shortest holidays and longest working hours in Europe

by Personnel Today 13 Dec 2002
by Personnel Today 13 Dec 2002

The
UK has the shortest holidays and the longest working hours in Europe, research
reveals.

The
study by Manpower shows that in the UK workers put in on average 43.6 hours a
week and one in ten UK workers spends 61 hours a week or more at work compared to
a European average working week of 40 hours.

German
and Swedish staff work 40.1 hours, people in France work on average 39.6 hours,
Italians 38.5 hours and the Spanish 40.6 hours.

The
research also finds that UK employees typically receive only 20 days holiday
whereas staff in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy enjoy
annual breaks of between 33 and 36 days. Workers in Austria, which has one of
Europe’s highest rates of gross domestic product per working population,
benefit from 38 days annual holiday.

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By
Ben Willmott

 

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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