South Korean Workers Recorded Particularly Long Working Hours

According to an OECD report released on August 15, South Korean workers worked for an average of 2,113 hours last year, 347 hours longer than the average of the 34 OECD member countries.

In the same year, South Korean employees’ PPP-based average real wage was US$33,110 whereas the OECD average was US$41,253. When it comes to hourly real wage, which is obtained by dividing the annual real wage by the number of working hours, South Korea and the OECD members reached US$15.67 and US$23.36, respectively.

Last year, Japanese workers worked for an average of 1,719 hours for an annual real wage of US$35,780 and an hourly real wage of US$20.81. This means South Korean employees work 49 days more than workers in Japan, which is well-known as one of the countries with the longest working hours in the world, but the annual and hourly real wages of the former are 92.5% and 75% or so of those of the latter, respectively. In addition, the figures were 1,371 hours, US$44,925 and US$32.77 for German workers and 1,790 hours, US$58,714 and US$32.8 for those in the United States.

Mexico recorded the longest working hours, 2,246, in the world last year, followed by South Korea (2,113), Greece (2,042), Chile (1,988) and Poland (1,963). Found on the opposite side of the list were Norway (1,424), Denmark (1,457), France (1,482) and Luxembourg (1,507).