There is a lot of debate in Spain about the total number of hours worked, usually to qualify the employment records of recent months. Two coinciding realities stir up this conversation: never before has the Spanish labour market employed so many people, 21.27 million according to the latest Labour Force Survey; But the total number of hours worked (608 million) is not at record levels. Compared to the third quarter of 2008, employment grew by 3.5% and hours worked fell by 3.8%. This means that the hours worked by each employee on average have decreased over the years. But this is not only happening in Spain, according to a study recently published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that focuses on European labor markets. In addition, he points out that it is men and students who are clearly behind this trend to work fewer hours.
"Three years after the coronavirus crisis, employment and total hours have fully recovered, but average hours per worker did not," say the authors of Analysing the Decline in Average Hours Worked in Europe, which focuses on the comparison with the pre-pandemic period, but also looks back. This trend, they conclude, "is not cyclical, but predominantly structural, extending the pre-pandemic trend in the long term" and "it seems unlikely" that it will be reversed in the future.
As the report points out from Eurostat data, total hours worked in Europe are now at similar figures to 2019 and in some cases below, but not the median hours worked per employee, slightly below 37 hours per week. This drop in hours worked is preceded by decades along the same lines: "Average working hours in developed economies have experienced a long-term downward trend since the 1870th century, falling by about half between 2000 and 0 in Germany, for example. In a broader sense, average working hours in OECD countries have declined by about 5.1870% each year between the 2000s and the early <>s."
The contraction in average working time is concentrated in three groups: among young people, men in general and particularly men with young children. "In the case of young people, an increase in the incidence of part-time workers who are also enrolled in education may explain the decline. For men in general, including those with young children, the decline affects both full-time and part-time workers. This finding is surprisingly consistent across European countries," the IMF study states. "The reductions in actual hours coincide with the reductions in the desired hours," add the authors (Diva Astinova, Romain Duval, Niels-Jakob H. Hansen, Ben Park, Ippei Shibata and Frederik Toscani), who consider that these reductions are due to the personal preferences of these groups of employees.
The analysis highlights that men continue to work more hours on average than women (men 39.9 hours on average per week, compared to 34.7 for women), "but this gender gap has narrowed over time, as has the gender gap in the employment rate." Behind this is the fact that women continue to assume most of the care, usually out of obligation. Moreover, the hours worked by women with children have increased slightly. In Spain, although they make up less than half of the labour force, they account for 73% of part-time work. Of the total number of part-time workers due to care or family obligations, 89% are women. And of the total without a full-time job because they haven't found one, they are 71%.
With a focus on other demographic groups, the IMF study also highlights that older workers (aged 55 to 64) and the elderly (aged 65 and over) "have seen an increase in their shares of employment as effective retirement ages increased in most European countries, But the average hours also decreased for them."
The study also notes that contractions in working time are more pronounced in richer countries than in those with lower GDPs. "These results are consistent with a dominant role of the income effect over the substitution effect in determining the labor supply of the worker at the intensive margin, as widely documented in the literature." A glance at Eurostat's present data shows this reality: in Serbia they work an average of 42.2 hours a week; in the Netherlands, 31.1 hours.
Thus, the report anticipates that the average number of hours worked will continue to fall in European countries, at a rate that will depend on productivity and wage growth, "at varying speeds between countries according to their trajectories of economic convergence". The higher the productivity and value added in economic activity, the sharper the contractions. "In the medium term, most economic forecasts, including those of the IMF, foresee modest productivity gains for economies close to the technological frontier, especially in advanced Europe," so the reduction in hours would also be "modest," according to the document. In the long term, the IMF warns of the key role that artificial intelligence or the measures taken to contain global warming will play.
PSOE and Sumar committed in their government agreement to reduce the ordinary working day, from the current 40 hours to 38.5 hours in 2024 and 37.5 in 2025. Doing so would mean Spain would join some European countries that have officially reduced the working day, although the 40-hour workweek remains the most widespread norm.
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