In Spain, working full time is synonymous with working more than 40 hours a week, the maximum average allowed by Spanish labor legislation that PSOE and Sumar want to reduce to 37.5 hours if they manage to form a Government.. Specifically, employees with this type of shift in Spain usually worked 40.4 hours per week in 2022, as reflected in the workforce survey prepared by the European statistical office Eurostat.

In the Old Continent, the work week for full-time workers ranges between 42.7 hours in Greece and 38.7 in Finland, the two extremes in terms of hours worked.. Within Europe, the case of countries such as France or Belgium draws attention, where the legal maximum weekly hours is clearly above the day that, in practice, workers declare. In France, the legal limit is 35 hours, but the usual working day is around 40, while in Belgium the work week is 38 hours, but 40.4 hours, the same as in Spain.

Although the legal limits of the working day have barely changed in Europe in recent years, the length of the working week has been reduced. Since 2013, when 41.7 hours were worked in Spain, the average working time has been reduced by 1.3 hours per week. A trend that has been replicated in most eurozone countries.

Behind those 40.4 hours that are usually worked on average in Spain every week during full days, very different realities hide.. One of the most striking is the gap that separates employees between salaried and self-employed.. While employed workers usually work 39.3 hours a week, self-employed workers extend their week to 46 working hours.. A difference of 7.2 hours that in practice means almost one more day of work.

Among the professional categories with the longest hours, qualified workers in the agricultural sector stand out, with a usual work week of 46.8 hours, followed by directors and managers, with 43.5 hours on average, and plant and machinery operators and assemblers, who total 41.6. On the other side of the spectrum, the shortest weekly hours are those of the military (38.1 hours) and those of office workers (38.7).

At the sector level, the differences are even more striking. The reality of working hours ranges from 54.5 hours per week for self-employed workers in the hospitality sector (which would be about 9 hours a day six days a week), to 35.2 hours for employees in the education sector. (about 7 hours a day in five days). Between the two, there are many intermediate realities.

If we look at all full-time workers—whether self-employed or employed—the agricultural sector tops the list of the most demanding hours.. In agriculture, people usually work 44 hours a week, a fact that adds to the fact that this is the lowest paid activity in the productive system in Spain.

After the agricultural sector comes the hospitality industry, a sector in which the work week usually reaches 43.2 hours and in which the average gross salary barely reaches 1,500 euros per month.. The transportation and storage sector is also above 40 hours (42); real estate (41.9); professional, scientific and technical activities (41.4); vehicle trade and repairs (41.4); extractive industries (40.6); manufacturing (40.6); information and communications, finance and insurance (40.2) and the supply of electrical energy (40).

Among activities under 40 hours, the shortest days appear in sectors linked to the public sector. Educational personnel, with 37.1 usual hours of work per week, are the ones with the shortest work week. Public administration and defense workers (37.6 hours) and health personnel and social services (38.1) move along a similar line.. It is important to remember that the maximum working day in the public sector is 37.5 hours per week, which partly explains why both educational and healthcare personnel tend to work fewer hours.

One of the shortest part-time days in the EU

Although the focus of the debate has been on limiting the maximum working day, more than a million workers have the opposite problem: they would like to work more hours, but they cannot. Last year there were 2.6 million part-time workers in Spain, according to Eurostat records. Of these, half had an involuntary part-time contract, the third highest rate in the entire EU.

In this regard, it is striking that Spain is one of the European countries in which part-time days are the shortest.. Employees in this situation usually work 20.1 hours per week, almost two hours less than the EU average (21.9). In the Old Continent, only Portugal, Denmark, Cyprus and Ireland have shorter weekly part-time days.