Long working hours are killing people. In fact, 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and heart disease due to working long hours, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is an astonishing 30% rise on a similar data set from 2000.

The WHO's research also found that working 55 hours or more each week led to a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with working 35-40 hours a week. Read on to discover our countdown of the countries where people work the longest hours, based on the most recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

In Austria, the average working week as of 2020 is 35.5 hours long. The country implements a standard 40-hour work week, with eight hours worked per day and a maximum of four hours of overtime.

Unusually, Austrian law states that workers with family commitments such as childcare or looking after sick relatives cannot be required to work overtime at all. 

On average, Belgians also worked 35.5 hours a week in 2020. The law in Belgium states that working hours can't exceed eight hours a day, with some exceptions for employees who work five-and-a-half days a week or less.

In principle, it's prohibited for anyone outside of certain sectors to work between the hours of 8pm and 6am. 

Like their Belgian and Austrian counterparts, Italians worked 35.5 hours per week in 2020. Working weeks are capped at 40 hours and must not exceed 48, even with paid overtime, while most employees are entitled to take a minimum of four weeks of holiday a year. This doesn't include Italy's 12 national holidays.

Depending on the sector, daily work hours typically run from 8am to 6pm or 9am to 7pm, with a lunch break of one or two hours.

According to the OECD, the average working week in Ireland was 35.6 hours in 2020. That's the longest Irish week since 2010, yet still lower than the neighbouring UK's average working week of 36.3 hours.

The legal maximum number of hours an employee can work is capped at 48, with their average working week generally calculated across a four-month period. 

The most recent OECD data for Australia shows the country has an average working week of 35.7 hours, which has been consistent since 2016.

Australian employees are permitted to work for 37 hours a week, or 7.4 hours a day. Although the average is lower than this, many people work much longer hours. For example, data shared by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2016 found that workers whose pay is determined by individual agreements typically work 38.5 hours a week. 

The average Swedish employee worked 36 hours per week in 2020, a slight increase from 35.9 hours in 2019. According to the country's  Working Hours Act, regular working hours can't exceed 40 hours a week meaning that, unlike other nations, Sweden's average is well below the legal limit. Swedes are also entitled to a minimum of five weeks of holiday each year. 

In Finland, the average working week lasted 36.3 hours in 2020. Flexible working hours might be the next big thing elsewhere in the world, but for Finnish workers it's been a right since the Working Hours Act was introduced in 1996.

This law enables staff in most sectors to adjust their workday by starting or finishing up to three hours earlier or later. 

In 2019, the average working week in the UK lasted 36.4 hours. However, COVID-19 forced many businesses to move to remote working and,  as a result, many employees have claimed they now work longer hours than they did in the office. According to the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS), people who worked from home to any degree in 2020 worked more hours (32.3 hours a week on average) than those who never worked from home (27.7 hours per week).

Due to the furlough scheme, which saw millions of workers paid by the government as they were unable to work at home, the average hours worked by the nation in 2020 dropped to 36.3 hours. 

As Spain still bases its working day around a two-hour siesta, you might be forgiven for thinking they have it easy. However, Spaniards typically don't finish work until 8pm. Starting at 9am, they stop at 2pm for two or three hours before returning to work and powering through until the evening.

In 2016 there were calls to abandon this formula and reflect the typical European working week instead. However, the average Spaniard worked for 36.4 hours per week in 2020, which is well below the standard 40-hour working week in Europe – and the country is even on the verge of trialling a four-day working week.

In 2020, the average working week in France was 36.5 hours long, the longest seen in the country since 2012.

According to French law, the working week is 35 hours long and any overtime must be paid at an increased rate of 125-150%. As of 1 January 2017, French employees have also had the "right to disconnect" from work calls and emails outside of their contracted hours; companies with more than 50 employees are legally obliged to set out the hours in which workers aren't required to send or answer emails. 

In Luxembourg, the working day must legally not exceed 10 hours, with a weekly limit of 40 hours. But there was no risk of this in 2020, when workers in Luxembourg had an average working week of 37.3 hours.

Luxembourgers also benefit from generous holidays; as well as national holidays, public sector workers receive a very generous 32 days of paid leave per year, while private sector employees receive 26 days a year.

Workers in New Zealand can legally work a maximum of 40 hours over five days. Even pre-COVID, the government was encouraging employers and their employees to consider work-life balance and more flexible working hours.

The initiative is apparently paying off: in 2020, New Zealanders worked just 37.8 hours per week on average.

Iceland's average working week was 38.7 hours in 2019 and 37.9 hours in 2020, both of which fall well below the country's legal limit of 40 hours across five days.

Iceland was actually one of several countries to have trialled a four-day working week. Between 2015 and 2019, 2,500 workers tried out reduced hours, without losing any pay. The trial found that people were just as productive, took fewer sick days, and reported greater levels of work satisfaction.

Estonia's working week runs from 9am to 6pm, with full-time employees typically undertaking 40 hours. But in 2020, the average working week dipped slightly from 38 hours to 37.9 according to the OECD. Estonians also benefit from generous holiday, receiving 28 days per year on average.

The typical Greek worked 38.7 hours per week in 2020. This is not surprising for a country that has battled economic issues in recent times and is still in recovery mode.

But with an employment rate of around 83% in 2020, the country is showing signs of bouncing back. However, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on industries such as tourism is not to be underestimated.

In America, employers are obliged to pay overtime on any working week that exceeds 40 hours. The US, however, is one of only 13 countries that does not guarantee paid time off, and it's left to employers to provide leave. On average, those who have worked five years at a company receive 15 days of paid vacation a year.

In terms of actual hours worked per week, the typical worker does less than the 40-hour limit; the average working week was 38.7 hours in 2020. That represents a small increase from 38.6 hours in 2019. 

Officially speaking, Latvia has a five-day working week where employees can be expected to work 40 hours. But in 2020, the OECD recorded the average week was 38.9 hours.

After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Latvia saw its employment rate drop a fraction: it fell from 65.6% in summer 2019 to 64.1% in summer 2020 according to data from the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia.

Lithuania adopted a new labour code in 2017, which means workers can't exceed 48 hours over seven consecutive days. They are also entitled to receive 20 days of paid leave every year.

However, while 48 hours is the maximum, the 2020 weekly average was just 39 hours. That's actually an increase of 0.2 hours from 2019 and the country's longest average working week for 10 years, which suggests the new laws may not be having the desired effect.

In the Slovak Republic, the average working week lasted 39.2 hours in 2020. The legal maximum someone can work is 40 hours a week, although that is reduced for shift workers. Overtime can reach a maximum of 400 hours per year.

Slovenia officially follows the European 40-hour working week. But in the private sector, Slovenians often work as much as 10 hours per day.

In 2020, Slovenia's working week was 39.3 hours long on average, which is considerably higher than the 37-hour collective average of the countries included in the OECD's data.

In Portugal, the typical working day will begin at 9am, with a two-hour break at 1pm. Work then continues until around 7pm. The legal working week is 40 hours, but the average hours worked a week in 2020 was 39.3. 

In Hungary, the working week is generally 40 hours long. In 2020, however, workers spent an average of 39.3 hours at work a week, lower than the 39.5 hours worked in 2019. This slight drop defies the concerns many had about working hours increasing following the introduction of new labour laws in December 2018.

The laws came into place to combat a labour shortage and mean that companies can demand as much as 400 hours of annual overtime – a significant rise from the previous 250 hours. Employers can take up to three years to pay their staff for extra hours. At the time, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in protest against the "slave law", although the Hungarian government said that "greater flexibility" was needed from workers.

The working week in the Czech Republic is around 39 hours a week, with employers dictating how those hours are spread.

Those aged under 18 years are not allowed to work more than six hours a day or more than 30 hours a week. As in Portugal, Hungary, and Slovenia, the average hours worked in the Czech Republic was 39.3 hours per week in 2020. 

Polish people can expect to work from 8am to 4pm on weekdays and 8am to 2pm on a Saturday.

After high levels of unemployment in the early to mid-2000s, which peaked at 20.7% in February 2003, Poland has gradually seen the rate fall again, and it sat comfortably at 3.5% in 2020. Employees worked 39.6 hours per week on average that same year. 

As of 1 April 2018, Israel's legal working week lost an hour, dropping from 43 hours to 42.

The working week runs from Sunday to Thursday, but also includes Friday mornings. However, the average hours actually worked across Israel only reached 40.6 hours per week in 2020.

Generally speaking, a working day in Chile begins at 8.30am and ends at 6pm – although some businesses may choose not to open until 9am. On average, employees spent 42.9 hours at work a week in 2020.

In Costa Rica, working days are split into day shifts and night shifts, with the maximum length of a day shift sitting at eight hours between 5am and 7pm, and night shifts coming in at six hours between 5pm and 7am.

These legal boundaries allow someone to work as many as 48 hours per week, and 2020's average week was a high 43.9 hours. That's 0.6 hours longer than 2019 yet still significantly lower than the 45.9-hour working week that the country averaged back in 2011. Employees are only entitled to two weeks of paid holiday for every 50 weeks worked.

Mexico is one of the hardest-working nations in the world, with the average employee putting in 44.7 hours a week in 2020 – only a small decrease from 44.9 hours the year before.

Working hours are generally around 8am until 6pm but these are decided by the employer since there are fairly lax labour laws in Mexico. Mexicans are some of the lowest-paid workers in the world, although President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did increase the country's minimum wage by 20% in 2020, following a 16% hike in 2019. In December 2021, he announced that the daily minimum wage would be increased once more, by 22%.

However, long days remain the norm and a lot of Mexicans work informally. Also, years of low wages mean that the recent legislative changes haven't yet done much to lift people out of poverty. 

In a steady dip from the average working week of 47 hours in 2018 and 46.4 hours in 2019, Turkish employees worked 45.6 hours a week in 2020.

That's just over the 45-hour working week that the country's Labor Act instated in 2003. According to Turkish law, the maximum overtime is 270 hours a year. 

Colombia is the hardest-working OECD nation in the world, with the average working week lasting 47.6 hours in 2020. The country's employees can legally work a maximum of 48 hours a week; last year, the Colombian government announced plans to gradually reduce this down to 42 hours a week by 2026.

Anyone who works between 9pm and 6am must be paid at 135% of normal daytime rate. The typical working day for businesses starts at 8am and ends at 5pm, while public administrative offices operate from 8am to 6pm. 

China's labour laws state that workers can't work more than 44 hours a week, or eight hours per day, although they can work overtime. However, a survey published by Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou in 2017 found that the typical person spent 44.7 hours per week at work, and that over 40% of those quizzed worked upwards of 50 hours a week.

China has long been known for issues with overworking, especially among tech workers; 45% of white-collar workers reported working more than 10 hours of overtime a week in 2018, according to a survey by recruitment service Zhaopin.

One particularly shocking case from 2016 was that of 44-year-old Zhang Rui, founder of a health app, who died of a heart attack. Many cited his work habits as a potential cause for his untimely death, and he was known for often working late into the night. 

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