Average work hours per week longest in South and East Asia.

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4057852254071953"

     crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

Average work hours per week longest in South and East Asia.

 India,China & Brazil have long working Hours. 

 Average hours of work per week was the highest in Asia and the pacific in 2019,particularly in south and East Asia.While it was the shortest in North America and Europe and Central Asia,particularly in northern,southern and western Europe, according to the latest report of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

    Among developing  countries, India,China and Brazil have much longer working hours,with Brazil showing a downward trend which began in the 1970s,according to the report titled Working Time and Work Life Balance Around the World.

   Globally, the sectors that had the longest weekly work hours in 2019 were wholesale and retail trade (4.1 hours),transport and communications (48.2 hours) and manufacturing (47.6 hours).Those with  the shortest weekly hours of work were agriculture (37.9 hours),education (39.3 hours) and health services (39.8 hours),though it seems likely that the extreme demands on the health services sector arising from the Covid-19 pandemic would have substantially increased average hours of work in that sector, according to the report. 

   The occupational group with the longest average hours of work was plant and machine operators and assemblers,who worked 48.2 hours per week on an average, followed by service and sales workers at 47.0 hours per week.In contrast, both professionals and workers in elementary occupations,including skilled agricultural workers, worked an average of 40.2 hours per week.

   The report said that reduced working hours and more flexible working time arrangements, such as those used during the Covid-19 crisis,can benefit economies,enterprises and workers,and lay the ground for a better and more healthy work life balance. 

Work-Life Balance 

The ILO study based on data collected from 160 countries - it's the  first one conducted by the organization that focuses on work life balance - found that a substantial portion of the global workforce are working either long or short hours when compared to a standard eight hour day/40 hour working week.

   More than one-third of all workers were regularly  putting in more than 48 hours per week,while a fifth of the global workforce was working short (part-time) hours of less than 35 per week.Informal economy workers were more likely to have long or short hours, according to the report. 

  The report looked at the two main aspects of working time-working hours  and working time arrangements,the effects of both on business performance and workers' work life balance. It includes a range of new statistics covering hours of work, both before and during the pandemic. 

  The study also looked at the crisis response measures the government and business used during the covid-19 pandemic to help keep organizations functioning and workers employed.It found that the increased proportion of workers on reduced hours helped to prevent job losses.The large-scale implementation of telemarketing nearly everywhere in the world that it was feasible to do so,changed the nature of employment, most likely for the foreseeable future, says the report.

   Pandemic measures also yielded powerful new evidence that giving workers more flexibility in how, where and when they work can be positive both for them and for business, for example by improving productivity. Conversely, restricting flexibility brings substantial costs,including increased staff turnover,says the report. There is a substantial amount of evidence that work-life balance policies provide significant benefits to enterprises, supporting the argument that such policies are win-win for both employers and employees, it said.

  The so-called Great Resignation phenomenon has placed work-life balance at the forefront of social and labour market issues in the post-pandemic world said Jon Messenger, lead Author of the report.The report shows that if we apply some of the lessons of the Covid-19 crisis and look very carefully at the way working hours are structured,as well as their overall length,we can create a win-win,improving both business performance and work-life balance, he added.