Overworked Greeks look at EU with envy
The suspicions of Greeks who feel they spend too much time working were confirmed when EU statistics made public yesterday suggested that employees here work on average 4.5 hours more every week than their EU counterparts. The figures from Eurostat for the second quarter of 2005 show that Greeks work an average of 42.4 hours per week, compared to the EU average of 37.9 hours. Only the Czechs work more than the Greeks, spending 42.8 hours per week at their jobs. The Dutch work the least hours a week – 31.4. Eurostat also found that 74.5 percent of Greek men have jobs, 3.3 percent more than the EU average, whereas only 46.2 percent of Greek women are employed, 10.1 percent less than the EU average. The figures suggest that part-time work is not popular in Greece, where less than 5 percent of the work force is employed in flexible jobs compared to 18.5 percent in the EU.
