Canada, US nowhere near top of the list
When it comes to limiting working hours, Canada and the United States have a lot of catching up to do, according to one report.
Yemen has the shortest average workweek of any country in the world, according to International Labour Organisation (ILO) figures compiled in a report by time-tracking software company Clockify.
The top 10 countries with the shortest workweeks for 2026 are:
-
Yemen — 22.95 hours a week
-
Netherlands — 26.57 hours
-
Norway — 26.58 hours
-
Syria — 27.90 hours
-
Vanuatu — 28.31 hours
-
Denmark — 28.91 hours
-
Finland — 29.10 hours
-
Austria — 29.15 hours
-
Sweden — 29.20 hours
-
Rwanda — 29.30 hours
A closer look at Yemen
Workers in Yemen average just 22.95 hours a week — roughly half the workweek logged in Bhutan, the country with the world's longest average hours, according to the Clockify report. The breakdown by gender shows men in Yemen working 23.45 hours a week on average, compared with 14.85 hours for women, per the same ILO figures cited by Clockify.
Unlike several other countries near the bottom of the rankings, where short hours reflect strong labour protections and high productivity, Yemen's low average is widely tied to the country's prolonged conflict and economic instability, which has disrupted formal employment.
By contrast, the No. 2 and No. 3 countries on the list — the Netherlands and Norway — are held up in the Clockify report as examples of shorter hours driven by widespread part-time work and strong labour-market conditions rather than economic distress.
Canada, US
Canada does not appear in the global bottom 10. A full-time employee here worked 38.8 hours a week on average in 2025, while part-time workers averaged 18.6 hours, according to Statistics Canada figures cited in the Clockify report. That marks a decline of 2.7 hours a week from 1980 levels.
Isidora Mirosavljevic, an employee experience specialist at CAKE.com, linked the decline to a cultural shift in workplace attitudes. "In the 1980s, employees used to work at least 40 hours per week and often had overtime work," Mirosavljevic said, according to Clockify. "But, nowadays, people are more aware of mental health and we're trying to prevent workplace burnout."
Only a fifth of Canadian professionals are sticking to their traditional core office hours, with the majority working beyond the standard workday to keep up with demands, according to a previous report.
The United States also sits well above the countries at the bottom of the list. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by Clockify put the average full-time American workweek at 33.1 hours in 2025, or 1,721 hours for the full year — a figure that falls below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 1,736 annual hours, but is still far higher than Yemen's, the Netherlands' or Norway's.
Hours worked do not simply fall as economies develop. Instead, they follow a mild bell shape — rising through middle-income development as manufacturing and services expand, then declining in high-income countries, according to a previous report.
