Which nation puts in more effort: the French or the Germans?
In a recent statement, France's prime minister criticised the country's citizens for not working enough. However, a more accurate comparison of working hours between French and German workers requires accounting for differences in age distribution, gender employment rates, and sector composition.
The French lunch break, a tradition that makes it illegal to eat lunch while at your desk or work station, is just one example of how French work culture differs from its German counterpart. France maintains a legislated 35-hour workweek, while Germany commonly has a 40-hour workweek, often through negotiated agreements.
However, these raw working hours comparisons do not adjust for demographic or workforce composition. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Employment Outlook 2025 discusses how population aging, changes in age-specific employment rates, and cohort effects influence employment-to-population ratios and labor market attachment. This implies that differences in age and gender structure, as well as employment patterns by cohort, affect labor time and productivity measures.
The OECD provides GDP per hour worked data to compare labor productivity, which implicitly adjusts for working time by measuring economic output per hour rather than total working hours. This metric is relevant to comparing real labor input efficiency rather than raw hours worked.
Moreover, the workforce composition affects working hours, remote working, and digitalization impacts, according to an International Labour Organization (ILO) report. However, this report does not provide specific France-Germany comparisons.
Recent data shows that French workers, on average, work 35.8 hours per week, while Germans work 33.9 hours per week. However, when looking at work hours divided by the total workforce, France worked an average of 666 hours per capita in 2024, compared to 724 hours in Germany. This data includes children, pensioners, the unemployed, and other people not in the workforce.
On average, French workers work 1,494 hours per year, while Germans work 1,340 hours a year, with both being below the EU average of 1,570 hours a year. The study also reveals that the number of hours worked in the USA has been consistently higher than in Europe throughout the period analysed.
France's public accounts minister stated that France works 100 hours less per person than Germany, a claim based on the total number of hours worked per year divided by the country's population. The 2026 Budget in France aims to save €40 billion to address the country's budget deficit, with one of the measures proposed being to axe two public holidays.
In conclusion, while direct adjusted comparisons are lacking in the given sources, OECD demographic and productivity data and French-German labor policy contexts provide the basis for more accurate future analyses considering workforce composition and demographics. The study published last year by France's Conseil d'analyse économique offers a comprehensive comparison of working hours over time, comparing France, Germany, the UK, and the USA.
- The French tradition of taking a legal lunch break and the legislated 35-hour workweek are significant factors in the French lifestyle that differ from Germany's common 40-hour workweek.
- In the realm of general-news and business, the 2026 Budget in France aims to save €40 billion, with one of the proposed measures being to axe two public holidays, in an effort to address the country's budget deficit.
