Any individual spending period for a paid occupational labor is called as working time. The standard working hours is legally specified according to the legislation of the countries. This limits with working hours per day, in per week, per month and year.
With this profile if any individual opts to work extra time it is called as overtime and the overtime payments are paid to the individuals as specified by the law. The standard working hours of countries worldwide is around 40-44 hours per week, but this varies in most of the countries.
9-5 is the general work schedule all around the world
The work duration of a working day is generally from 9-5 all around the world. This phrase is used for the description of a conventional and tedious job. This was originated from the traditional business hours of America of 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday to Friday that represented the week days work schedule with 8 hours per day which calculated up to 40 hours a week.
This phrase is concluded for the individual who is an employee and not a self-employee. The work real time varies from 35-48 hours due to several reasons like, breaks, inclusion, lack of inclusion, etc. those are certainly unavoidable and thus is reflected on the daily working schedule.
With the technical enhancements in work field, the working hours lowered
With such fact, it is stated that the average hours of working have been decreased significantly within these few decades. With a simple example, this statement can be illustrated.
In the early 19th century the estimated work time per week was 60 hours which has considerably lowered around 33. An average man employed, working full time for 8.4 hours a day and an average employed woman working full time for 7.7 hours a day.
The factors that influenced in lowering the average work time are-:
- Technical advancements that made the working capacity efficient and easy with mechanization, Information Technology and uses of robotics. This indeed lowered the pressure and effort with better productivity.
- The involvement of female community in various sectors for work even lowered the working time of man. The ladies opted to share hands in the work fields rather than bounded with the common household works and childbearing works.
The time of working per day as well as week lowered with such facts and even the growing population supported this. The numerous of working hours that was enforced in the early 19th century has comparably lowered down with the technically advanced age.
The varying working hours of the worldwide countries
- The working hour in Canada was 36.6 hours per week in the year 2012 that varied along with age, gender and location of the individual.
- The working hour of US was 1700 hours per year.
- France government had standardized the working hours per week as 35 hours and the additional hours were considered as overtime.
- The government of Australia has set the maximum working hours of 38 hours per week.
- The Asian countries have generally a higher working schedule than the other countries. The timing not only varies with the countries, it even depends on the industry and the international contracts.