Employees in Czechia work among most hours in the world

People in Czechia work among the most hours every year out of all countries internationally, according to a new study by economy-news website Visual Capitalist (VC). On average, people in Czechia work about 221, eight-hour working days per year. This equates to around 1,766 hours per year.

Using data derived from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the VC study finds that employees in Czechia work the third-highest amount of hours out of all EU countries. Only Greece and Poland came higher up in the overall ranking.

Talk of a shorter, four-day working week is gathering steam in Czechia. A 2023 survey from consulting group Moore Czech Republic found that 83 percent of 18 to 26-year-olds viewed a shorter week positively. 

A separate survey last year from polling agency Ipsos and human resources firm Welcome to the Jungle revealed that “working hours and workload” were the second-most important aspect during a person’s job search, with 94 percent of people in Czechia finding it important. 

That same survey also uncovered that 70 percent of employees in Czechia would like to try a shorter working week, but only one in five employees has practical experience with it. Of all of the options for new measures for flexibility in the workplace, the four-day workweek was the most popular.

The Czech government is also considering a new amendment to labor regulations that would give employees the power to determine their own working hours.

Talking to Expats.cz last year, director of business services firm in Czechia, Association of Business Service Leaders in the Czech Republic, Jonathan Appleton said a four-day working week in Czechia allows employers to “maintain and even strengthen the loyalty and satisfaction of their employees, which is today – when the shortage of quality candidates on the labor market prevails – very important.

The City of Prague’s Institute of Planning and Development said earlier this year that the average person in Prague worked 39 hours per week in 2022, giving them less free time than people living in Vienna or Munich, who worked around four hours less per month.

Out of all the countries surveyed in the VC study, Czechia’s neighbor Germany had the lowest number of working hours annually per employee, at 1,343.