Countries With the Best Work-Life Balance (2025)

The amount of time people spend working, and how much is left for rest, family, leisure and personal development, is one of the most basic quality-of-life questions. Countries with good work-life balance tend to combine shorter working years with high output per hour, long paid holidays and family policies that let parents keep working without burning out.

There is no official "work-life balance index" that every statistician agrees on. The OECD's Better Life Index treats work-life balance as one of its eleven topics and looks at how many employees work very long hours and how much time people have for leisure and personal care. This ranking uses the most comparable hard number behind that idea, average annual hours actually worked per worker, from the OECD's 2024 data, and then adds the legal framework that shapes those hours: statutory paid leave, part-time rights, parental leave and limits on working time.

Work-life balance is shaped by legal frameworks (maximum working hours, minimum holiday entitlements), cultural norms (whether after-hours email is expected, whether taking leave carries stigma), family policy and the structure of the economy. Countries with strong collective bargaining and long statutory leave tend to come out ahead, but culture can undermine even generous laws, as Japan and South Korea show.

Key takeaways

• In 2024, workers in Germany averaged about 1,334 hours of work, the lowest of any OECD country, ahead of Denmark (1,372) and Norway (1,388)
• The OECD average was 1,741 hours. The United States was at 1,796 and Mexico at 2,215, among the highest in the OECD (Colombia, at about 2,219, was marginally higher)
• The Netherlands has the highest part-time employment share in the EU, at 38.9% of employed people aged 20–64 in 2024, compared with an EU average of 17.1%
• France guarantees 30 working days of paid leave a year, the UK 28 days (which may include bank holidays), and the United States none at federal level
• South Korea cut its legal weekly maximum from 68 to 52 hours in 2018, but it still works more hours than most OECD countries

Countries With the Fewest Hours Worked (OECD, 2024)

The table ranks OECD countries by average annual hours actually worked per worker, the measure most often used for international comparisons of working time. Lower is better for work-life balance, all else being equal.

Rank	Country	Annual Hours Worked per Worker (2024)	Approx. Hours per Week (÷52)	Change vs 2023
1	Germany	1,334	25.7	−4
2	Denmark	1,372	26.4	−3
3	Norway	1,388	26.7	−3
4	Sweden	1,433	27.6	0
5	Austria	1,435	27.6	+1
6	Iceland	1,447	27.8	−10
7	Netherlands	1,452	27.9	+5
8	Luxembourg	1,467	28.2	0
9	Finland	1,502	28.9	+2
10	France	1,509	29.0	+6
11	Switzerland	1,519	29.2	−9
12	United Kingdom	1,538	29.6	+13
13	Belgium	1,583	30.4	−8
14	Estonia	1,611	31.0	+5
15	Latvia	1,611	31.0	+8
—	Japan	1,617	31.1	+7
—	Australia	1,627	31.3	−18
—	Canada	1,697	32.6	+3
—	OECD average	1,741	33.5	−4
—	United States	1,796	34.5	−9
—	South Korea	1,865	35.9	−7
—	Mexico	2,215	42.6	−13

Source: OECD, Average annual hours actually worked per worker, all workers (employees and self-employed), reference year 2024. Weekly figures are simple divisions by 52 and include holidays and part-time workers, so they are lower than a typical full-time week.

How to read this table

Annual hours are calculated by national statistical offices from labour force surveys and national accounts, then compiled by the OECD. The figure divides total hours worked in the economy by the average number of people in work. Three consequences follow:

1. Part-time work lowers the average. The Netherlands and Germany both have large part-time workforces, which pulls their averages down. A Dutch full-time worker does not work 28 hours a week.
2. Holidays and sick leave lower the average. Countries with long statutory leave and generous sick pay accumulate fewer hours over a year.
3. Cross-country comparisons are approximate. The OECD itself cautions that the data are intended for comparisons of trends over time, because the sources and methods differ between countries. Gaps of 20 or 30 hours a year should not be over-interpreted; gaps of 300 or 400 hours are meaningful.

For the other end of the distribution, see our ranking of the countries where people work the most hours.

Where this data comes from

This ranking uses three types of source. Working time comes from the OECD's database of average annual hours actually worked, reference year 2024. Part-time shares come from Eurostat's labour force survey table on persons in part-time employment (lfsa_eppga), reference year 2024, ages 20–64. Leave and working-time rules come from national government sources, linked in the relevant sections and in the sources list at the end. Where a rule is set by collective agreements rather than law, the statutory minimum is shown, and the actual leave most workers receive is often higher.

Statutory Paid Leave and Working-Time Rules

Country	Statutory Paid Annual Leave	Notes on Working Time	Source (year)
France	30 working days (5 weeks), accrued at 2.5 days per month	35-hour legal working week since 2000	Service-Public.fr (2025)
United Kingdom	28 days (5.6 weeks) for a 5-day week; bank holidays can be included	48-hour average weekly limit, with opt-out	GOV.UK (2025)
Japan	10 days after 6 months, rising to 20 days with length of service	Overtime capped at 45 hours a month and 360 a year in principle, since 2019	Labor Standards Act, Work Style Reform (2019)
United States	None required by federal law	No federal cap on weekly hours for adults; overtime pay above 40 hours for covered workers	US Department of Labor (2025)
South Korea	15 days after one year	52-hour weekly maximum (40 + 12 overtime) since 2018	Labor Standards Act amendment (2018)
EU minimum	At least 4 weeks	48-hour average weekly limit including overtime	Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC

The EU's Working Time Directive sets the floor for all 27 member states. Most northern European countries go well beyond it, either in law or through collective agreements that cover most workers. That is why the countries at the top of the hours table are almost all European.

Parental Leave in the Nordic Countries

Country	Total Paid Leave	Reserved for Each Parent	Pay	Source
Sweden	480 days per child	90 days per parent	390 days income-related; 90 days at SEK 180 per day	Försäkringskassan
Norway	49 weeks at 100% or 61 weeks at 80%	15 weeks (100%) or 19 weeks (80%) for the father or co-mother	100% or 80% of earnings, up to a ceiling	NAV (children born from 1 July 2024)
Iceland	12 months	6 months per parent, of which 6 weeks are transferable	Earnings-related	Icelandic law in force from January 2021

Sources: Försäkringskassan; NAV; Nordic Council, information on Icelandic parental leave.

Reserved, non-transferable leave is the key design feature. When leave can be transferred freely, mothers take most of it. When a portion is lost unless the second parent uses it, take-up by fathers rises sharply. That is now the norm across the Nordic countries.

Germany: Fewest Hours in the OECD

Germany has the lowest average annual hours of any OECD country, at about 1,334 in 2024. That does not mean Germans work short days. It reflects three things that add up across a year:

• Long paid leave. The Federal Holidays Act sets a minimum of 24 working days on a six-day basis, which is 20 days for a five-day week. Most collective agreements and many contracts give 25 to 30 days.
• Public holidays. Germany has between 9 and 13 public holidays depending on the federal state.
• Part-time work. Eurostat puts Germany's part-time share at 28.8% of employed people aged 20–64 in 2024, well above the EU average of 17.1%.

Germany's model also rests on strong works councils and sectoral collective bargaining, which give employees a formal say over working-time arrangements. Germany's limitation is that a large part-time share, especially among women, is partly involuntary, linked to limited all-day childcare and tax rules that favour a second, smaller income in a household.

The Netherlands: Short Hours, High Productivity

The Netherlands has the highest part-time employment rate in the European Union. In 2024, 38.9% of employed people aged 20–64 worked part-time, according to Eurostat, against an EU average of 17.1%. That is the main reason Dutch average annual hours (about 1,452 in 2024) are among the lowest in the OECD.

Dutch part-time culture grew out of labour-market changes in the 1980s and 1990s that gave part-time workers the same hourly pay, benefits and pension accrual as full-time staff. Later legislation gave employees the right to ask their employer to change their working hours. Part-time work lost the penalty it carries in many other countries and became an option chosen for family, study or simply more leisure.

The Netherlands remains one of Europe's richest and most productive economies. Its part-time model has costs, too: Dutch policymakers worry about labour shortages, and women's part-time work is linked to lower lifetime earnings and pensions.

Denmark and Norway: Short Hours and High Wages

Denmark (about 1,372 hours in 2024) and Norway (about 1,388) come second and third. Both combine high wages, long holidays, flexible working arrangements and strong collective bargaining, and both are among the happiest countries in the world; see our happiness index ranking.

Denmark's "flexicurity" model, which pairs easy hiring and firing with generous unemployment benefits and retraining, is often described as part of its work-life balance story. Job loss is less frightening when income support and help finding new work are reliable, which lowers the pressure to work very long hours to protect one's position.

Norway's parental leave is among the most generous in the world. For a child born on or after 1 July 2024, NAV pays 49 weeks at 100% of earnings or 61 weeks at 80%. The father or co-mother has a quota of 15 weeks at the 100% rate (19 weeks at 80%) that cannot be transferred.

France: 35 Hours and the Right to Disconnect

France's 35-hour working week, introduced by the Aubry laws in 1998 and 2000 under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, was one of the most ambitious legislative interventions in working time anywhere. The law lowered the legal working week from 39 to 35 hours, with overtime counted from the 35-hour threshold. Full-time employees can and do work more than 35 hours, but the extra time is paid at overtime rates or offset with additional rest days.

French employees accrue 2.5 working days of paid leave for each month worked, giving 30 working days, or five weeks, for a full year, according to the government's Service-Public.fr portal. Collective agreements often add more.

France was also an early mover on digital working time. Legislation passed in 2016 and in force from January 2017 requires companies with 50 or more employees to negotiate how employees can disconnect from work email and messages outside working hours. The law does not prescribe exact rules; it obliges employers to address the issue. Enforcement is limited, but the law helped put the "right to disconnect" on the European agenda.

Sweden: The Parental Leave Benchmark

Sweden (about 1,433 hours in 2024) is best known for parental leave. According to Försäkringskassan, parents share 480 days of parental benefit per child. Of these, 390 days are paid in relation to income and 90 at a flat minimum of SEK 180 per day. Each parent has 90 income-related days reserved that cannot be transferred to the other.

Sweden's reserved days started as a single "father's month" in the 1990s and have since been extended to 90 days. The reserved days were designed to change behaviour, and they have: fathers in Sweden now take a substantial share of parental leave. Research in several Nordic countries has found that fathers who take leave tend to stay more involved in childcare as children grow up.

Iceland: The Most Equal Parental Leave Design

Iceland's parental leave law, which took effect on 1 January 2021, gives a total of 12 months. Each parent is entitled to six months, of which six weeks can be transferred to the other parent. That leaves each parent with a non-transferable quota of four and a half months. The design is close to fully equal between parents, and ministry figures suggest a large majority of fathers use their quota.

Iceland's average annual working hours fell by about 10 hours between 2023 and 2024, to about 1,447. The country also ran large public-sector trials of a shorter working week between 2015 and 2019, which were followed by collective agreements allowing many workers to reduce their hours.

Japan and South Korea: The Overwork Problem

Japan and South Korea are frequently cited as cautionary tales. Both have high incomes and strong social infrastructure, yet both have long struggled with overwork cultures.

Japan has a word, karoshi, for death from overwork, and such deaths can be recognised for workers' compensation. Under the Work Style Reform laws in force from April 2019, overtime is capped at 45 hours a month and 360 hours a year in principle (small and medium-sized firms followed in April 2020). Even under special agreements, overtime may not exceed 720 hours a year, and overtime plus holiday work must stay below 100 hours in any single month. Critics noted at the time that a cap of almost 100 hours a month was still very high. Employers must also ensure that employees entitled to 10 or more days of annual leave take at least five of them.

Interestingly, Japan's average annual hours (about 1,617 in 2024) are now below the OECD average. Part of the fall reflects a growing share of part-time and older workers rather than shorter hours for full-time employees, so the average understates the hours of many salaried employees.

South Korea's 2018 amendment to the Labor Standards Act cut the legal weekly maximum from 68 hours to 52 (40 regular hours plus 12 of overtime) by clarifying that the working week includes weekends. The cap was phased in by company size between July 2018 and July 2021. Korea's average annual hours (about 1,865 in 2024) remain well above the OECD average, though they have been falling.

Both countries also have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Statistics Korea reported a total fertility rate of 0.72 for South Korea in 2023, the lowest in the OECD. Researchers commonly cite long working hours and the difficulty of combining careers with family as one of several contributing factors.

The United States: No Statutory Paid Leave

The United States had about 1,796 average annual hours per worker in 2024, above the OECD average of 1,741. Its main distinguishing feature is legal rather than statistical: federal law requires no paid vacation. The Department of Labor states that the Fair Labor Standards Act "does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations," and vacation pay is a matter of agreement between employer and employee.

The Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for a new child, but it is unpaid and covers only eligible employees at covered employers. Several states have introduced their own paid family leave and paid sick leave programmes, so entitlements vary widely across the country. For a broader comparison, see the countries with the most paid vacation days and the countries with the most public holidays.

Do Shorter Hours Hurt Productivity?

A common worry is that shorter working time must come at the expense of output. The OECD's data suggest the relationship is more complicated. Several countries with the lowest annual hours, including Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, also have some of the highest levels of GDP per hour worked. Countries with very long hours, such as Mexico, generally have much lower output per hour.

That correlation does not prove that shorter hours cause higher productivity. Causation probably runs in both directions: richer, more capital-intensive economies can afford shorter hours, and well-rested workers may be more productive. Studies of very long working hours have found that output per hour tends to fall as hours rise past a certain point, and that long hours are associated with higher risks of stroke and heart disease. A joint WHO and ILO study published in May 2021 estimated that working 55 or more hours a week led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease worldwide in 2016, compared with a baseline of 35–40 hours (ILO). For the biology of chronic stress, see our article on the psychology of stress.

The Four-Day Week Experiments

Interest in shorter working weeks has grown since 2019. Large pilot programmes, notably in Iceland's public sector and later in the United Kingdom, tested reduced hours without a cut in pay. Organisers reported that most participating employers kept the shorter schedule after the trials. These were voluntary pilots, often in office-based organisations that chose to take part, so they do not show what would happen if a shorter week were imposed on the whole economy. They are best read as evidence that some types of work can be reorganised into fewer hours without obvious losses.

Technology is also changing the debate. AI tools that automate routine tasks could, in principle, free up working time, though historically productivity gains have often gone into higher output or income rather than shorter hours. Our article on how AI may change jobs by 2030 looks at the evidence.

Common Misconceptions

"Germans and Dutch work part-time weeks." Average annual hours include part-time workers, holidays and sick leave. A full-time employee in Germany typically works close to 40 hours a week; the national average is low because many people work part-time and leave is long.

"Long hours equal a strong economy." Mexico, Costa Rica and Chile have some of the longest annual hours in the OECD but lower incomes than countries with much shorter hours.

"Laws alone fix overwork." Japan and South Korea both have legal limits, yet cultural pressure to stay late persisted for years. Law and workplace norms have to change together.

"The right to disconnect bans after-hours email." France's law requires employers to negotiate or adopt a policy on disconnection; it does not ban messages outside working hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which country has the best work-life balance? A: On average annual hours worked per worker, Germany ranks first in the OECD, with about 1,334 hours in 2024, followed by Denmark and Norway. These countries combine long paid leave, strong collective bargaining and high part-time rates. No single official index ranks overall work-life balance, so results depend on the measure used.

Q: How many hours does the average worker work per year in the OECD? A: The OECD average was about 1,741 hours per worker in 2024. Germany had the lowest figure, at about 1,334, and Mexico among the highest, at about 2,215 (Colombia was marginally higher, at about 2,219). The US figure was about 1,796.

Q: Does the USA have legally mandated paid vacation? A: No. The US Department of Labor states that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations. Paid leave is set by employers, contracts or state laws. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides job-protected leave, but it is unpaid.

Q: Why does the Netherlands have such short working hours? A: Mainly because of part-time work. Eurostat data show 38.9% of employed people aged 20–64 in the Netherlands worked part-time in 2024, the highest share in the EU. Dutch part-time workers have equal rights to hourly pay, benefits and pensions, which makes reduced hours a mainstream choice.

Q: What is the right to disconnect? A: It is a legal requirement that limits work contact outside working hours. In France, legislation in force from 2017 requires companies with 50 or more employees to negotiate how staff can disconnect from work communications. Australia introduced a right to disconnect in 2024, and other countries have adopted variations.

Q: Which country has the most generous parental leave? A: Sweden is among the most generous, with 480 days of parental benefit per child and 90 days reserved for each parent. Norway pays 49 weeks at full earnings, or 61 weeks at 80%, with a quota for each parent. Iceland gives 12 months, split almost equally between parents.

The Bottom Line

The 2024 OECD data confirm that high incomes and short working years can go together. Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands work some of the fewest hours in the developed world while remaining among its richest economies. The pattern behind their results is consistent: long statutory or negotiated paid leave, part-time work with equal rights, paid parental leave with reserved quotas for each parent, and strong collective bargaining. The United States stands out for having no federal paid leave at all, while Japan and South Korea show that legal limits work only when workplace culture changes with them.

Sources

• OECD, Average annual hours actually worked per worker (2023–2024)
• Eurostat, Persons in part-time employment, % of total employment (lfsa_eppga) (2024)
• Service-Public.fr, Congés payés du salarié dans le secteur privé
• GOV.UK, Holiday entitlement
• US Department of Labor, Vacation leave
• Försäkringskassan, Parental benefit
• NAV, Foreldrepenger

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