The Decline of Working Hours per Year After the Industrial Revolution
Working Hours
IntroductionResearch & WritingChartsCite This WorkReuse This WorkWork is a central part of our lives. It is something we do almost every day, for much of the day, for decades on end. Because it is so central, looking closely at how much time we spend working can tell us a lot about our lives and the societies we live in.How much do people around the world work? In many countries today, people work much less than in the past 150 years. Working less means being able to spend time becoming more educated or simply enjoying leisure time.This is substantial progress, but there are still huge inequalities across and within countries, and progress still to make.Here we present the data on working hours. We explore how it differs across countries and over time and how these differences matter for people’s lives.Research & WritingInteractive charts on Working HoursCite this workOur articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2020) - “Working Hours” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours' [Online Resource]BibTeX citation@article{owid-working-hours,
    author = {Charlie Giattino and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser},
    title = {Working Hours},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2020},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours}
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