Urban Transformation

These are the cities where people work the longest hours

People walk past the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai, India, December 18, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade

Top of the list is Mumbai, with an average of 3,315 working hours per year. Image: REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade

Keith Breene
Senior Writer, Forum Agenda
Image: UBS/Statista

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, chances are that if you have a job, you feel like you work too hard. But a new survey has revealed dramatic differences in the number of hours worked in different cities.

Mumbai tops the chart with a whacking annual average of 3,315 hours. At the other end of the scale is Rome, where the average worker clocks up only 1,581 hours per year - well under half the figure for their Mumbaikar counterparts.

The UBS study found that the five hardest-working cities are all in emerging economies, with residents of Hanoi, Mexico City, New Delhi and Bogota all putting in similar hours.

Many Western cities featured towards the middle of the ranking, with the average New Yorker working 2,045 hours and the average Londoner 2,002.

Europe dominated the bottom of the table with Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow and Helsinki all working an average of 1,750 hours, or fewer, per year.

Take a break

The survey also revealed huge differences in the amount of holiday entitlement in different parts of the world.

The hard-working Mumbai population were among those with the least time off, at only 10.4 days of vacation per year.

Image: UBS/Statista

Workers in Los Angeles had even less, at 10.1 days, and in Lagos, holidays averaged just 6.1 days per year.

Those who prefer a more leisurely break should head to Riyadh, which averaged 37 days per year, or Russia. Workers in Moscow and St Petersburg get 33.3 and 32.3 days annual holiday respectively.

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