Brits Work 38% More Than the French in Their Lifetimes

In January, one million French citizens took to the streets in protest after Emmanuel Macron announced plans to push the retirement age back from 62 to 64. It seems inevitable that the retirement age in the United Kingdom will have to increase too: the only question that remains is by how much? Last month, a suggestion from the Centre for Social Justice that the United Kingdom’s retirement age should increase to 75 barely raised an eyelid. With just 20 miles of Channel separating us from France it would seem a little unfair that Brits might have to work at least a decade longer than their neighbours, but the unfortunate reality is that the citizens of some countries will spend significantly more of their lives at work than others. MoneyTransfers investigates:

Sri Lankans Work 15 Years Less Than Libyans

If the government did follow the CSJ’s advice and push the UK’s retirement age to 75, it would be half a decade more than Libya which, at 70, has the regrettable distinction of having the world’s highest retirement. Sitting on the other end of the scale, Sri Lanka boasts the world’s lowest retirement age at 55 – which means that the average Sri Lankan works 15 years less than the average Libyan. In the United Kingdom, we currently have the fourth highest retirement age in the world, at 66 years, which is only marginally better than the Americans, who retire at 66 years and 3 months.

The French Work the Least Number of Hours

With a total of 1,313 annual working hours, the French spend the least amount of their time at work. The Sri Lankans come second with 1,584 annual working hours, and it is a requirement of Sri Lankan law that a person should not exceed 45 hours per week. This sort of restriction would be unheard of in China, which has an average working day of 9.2 hours, and the highest number of annual working hours in the world, at 2,291 hours. While we might moan about what we perceive to be our long working week in the United Kingdom, we actually work the eighth shortest number of annual working hours in the world.

The Average Libyan Will Work For 52 Years of their Lifetime

With Libya’s retirement age set at 70, and assuming that most citizens begin work at 18 years’ of age, the average Libyan can expect to spend 52 years of their life working. In comparison, lucky Sri Lankans will spend just 37 years of their lives working. In the United Kingdom, we will work for 48 years of our lives, which is currently just four years more than our French neighbours.

Libyans Spent the Most Amount of Their Lives at Work

Multiplying the number of working years by the number of annual working hours for each country, it is clear to see that Libyans spend far more time at work than citizens in any other country, with the average Libyan worker clocking a staggering 118,780 working hours over a lifetime. While Libyan law provides for wages and pensions, it prohibits trade unions and does not permit the right to strike: collective bargaining is not allowed, and the government is required to approve all labour agreements. This tends to suggest that an improvement in the current situation is unlikely in the near future.

On the other and more fortunate end of the scale, the French spend the least amount of time at work, clocking just 57,772 working hours in an average lifetime – close to half of the time spent by the average Libyan. Unlike Libya, employee protections in France are robust and the country has a right-to-disconnect mandate, legally entitling employees to ignore business correspondence outside of their working hours.

At 79,546 working hours, the UK sits somewhere in the middle. Brits will end up working almost 40% more than the French in their lifetime, but do not have it nearly as bad as many others.

Swedish Citizens Enjoy the Most Work Free Years After Employment

Retirement may come with plans of cruise holidays, allotment ownership and new hobbies, but the sad reality is that not everyone gets to make the most of their work-free years. By deducting the average life expectancy of each country from the retirement age, we can determine the number of work-free years that each citizen enjoys. Unfortunately the outlook isn’t good for Libyans on this metric either: they have an average of just 3.25 non-working years in their lifetime.

The United States also offers very few work-free years after retirement. The average American will have just 13.44 years in retirement: more than 8 years less than the French.

Raising the retirement age to 75 would be very unwelcome, and would put us entirely out of kilter with the rest of the world. The average UK citizen currently has just over 16 work free years after retirement, and reducing this by almost half, to just over 7 years, would be of huge detriment to the health and aspirations of our population. It is no coincidence that the countries with the lowest working hours are also the ones where the citizens tend to live the longest.

Jonathan Merry, expert at MoneyTransfers.com

We might do well to look to Scandinavia for advice, as Swedish citizens enjoy the highest number of work free years after retirement at 21.65. This is no accident: Sweden’s pension reforms came after cross-party advice and research from the London School of Economics, linking pension age to life expectancy. The retirement system in Sweden is often praised for its flexibility, and the country’s focus on work-life balance and social welfare contributes to its well-supported retirement environment.

Country Data

Methodology

We used World Population Review to determine the retirement age by country.

The average annual working hours by country were taken from Clockify. This is with the exception of Libya whose annual working hours were determined by taking the weekly working hours from Papaya Global and multiplying it by 52 (the number of weeks in a year).

However, the annual working hours given did not strip out time that was not in fact worked, because it was taken as paid annual leave. In order to ascertain the true amount of hours worked, we identified the number of days of paid leave available in each country (from World Population Review), and multiplied this by the number of working hours per day for that country. This was with the exception of the United States, whose data on the number of working hours per day came from Foothold America and the OPM. The resulting figure for each country gave an annual number of hours of paid leave, which was stripped out of the annual working hours taken from Clockify.

Assuming that the average citizen started full time work at the age of 18, we deducted this from the retirement age of the country to ascertain the average number of working years each citizen had in their lifetime.

We took the number of working years for each country and multiplied it by the average annual working hours to determine the working hours per lifetime.

We took data on the average life expectancy for each country from Worldometers.

We deducted the average retirement age from the average life expectancy for each country to work out the total number of work-free years citizens could enjoy after employment.