Spaniards work half an hour more per week than the European average, and four more than the Dutch

Employees in Spain worked an average of 36.3 hours per week in 2025. The figure is above the European average of 35.9 hours and higher than countries with the shortest workweeks, including Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. Longer workweeks appear in Slovenia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, and Greece. Differences align with the share of employees working part time, with higher part-time shares in countries that report shorter hours. Part-time work can be voluntary and support work-life balance, or involuntary and reflect underemployment. Eurostat data show that 45.7% of part-time workers in Spain want to work more hours, a high EU rate.

"Employees in Spain worked an average of 36.3 hours a week in 2025, according to the latest figures released by Eurostat. That figure keeps Spain above the European average of 35.9 hours and far from the countries where the average working week is shortest. The latter include some of the continent's most economically advanced states, the opposite of those with the longest hours and with less-developed productive sectors."

"This variable is inseparable from another labor statistic: the share of employees working part time. Countries with shorter hours are precisely those where a larger share of the labor market works part time. That ranking is led by the Netherlands, with 38.6% of its employees, followed by Austria (30.2%) and Germany (29.2%), while at the other end are Bulgaria (1.7%), Romania (2.3%) and Croatia (2.9%)."

"This dynamic reflects the two faces of part-time work: it can be positive if it is voluntary a sign of efforts to find a work-life balance, or the fact that a parttime wage can be enough to live on or negative if it is involuntary and a feature of underemployment, meaning workers who put in fewer hours than they would like. Eurostat also measures this phenomenon and Spain does not fare well: 45.7% of part-time workers in Spain would like to work more hours, the thirdworst rate in the EU, surpassed only by Romania at 62.3% and Italy at 51%."

Read at english.elpais.com