The survey, conducted by Coe-Rexecode examined the amount of time actually spent at work and not nominal hours which include hours missed due to absences, vacations, strikes etc., using data provided by Eurostat covering the period up until 2013.
The findings corroborate the results of the first study performed by the group published in 2012 using 2010 data.
It appears that despite the crisis, Greeks are working harder than almost all of their European counterparts – at least the Greeks who have jobs to go to.
In 2013 the average Greek employee worked a little over 2,000 hours, surpassed only by Romanians who worked 2099 hours on average. Behind the Greeks are the Bulgarians, Croats, Poles, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Estonians and Cypriots.
At the other end of the spectrum were the Finns at the bottom of the table (1,648 hours) with the French close behind (1,661).
The supposedly industrious Germans, meanwhile, are in the middle of the table together with the British, working about 150 fewer hours per year than the Greeks. The trend between 2010 and 2013 for Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden was for a fall in the number of hours worked.
It is also perhaps worthy of note that Greece is the only country of the ‘PIGS ‘(Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Greece) with above average working hours.