Joe is the creator of Inch Calculator and has over 20 years of experience in engineering and construction. He holds several degrees and certifications. If a full-time employee works five days per week for the entire year, that totals 2,080 hours. Most employers consider 2,080 to be the standard number of work hours per year. For a full-time job, there are 40 hours in a typical work week. However, each employer varies, and some employers offer full-time jobs that are 32 hours per week, for example.
The final step in calculating hours is to account for any unpaid breaks in the day. Add up all of the break time in minutes, then divide the total minutes by 60 to convert them to hours as a decimal.
The chart below shows the hours in a typical workday for various start and end times. This chart does not account for unpaid breaks during these times.
How do you calculate 11 4?
11/4 = 114 = 2 34 = 2.75 Spelled result in words is eleven quarters (or two and three quarters).
If you need to submit a time card or track time for a job or project, then you probably need to track the hours you worked. Follow a few simple steps to find the total time you worked.Since 30 minutes is equal to 0.5 hours, you can change the end time to 17.5 as a decimal. The start time has no minutes to divide, so it’s already in decimal form – 9:00 becomes 9.0.Overall, it’s important to understand how to calculate your total hours worked in order to track projects and ensure that you are paid accurately. It’s also important to understand what items need to be tracked on a time sheet, for example, paid or unpaid breaks. The first step in calculating hours is to convert the start and end times to 24-hour time, sometimes called military time. To do this, morning hours will stay the same, and you will add 12 if the time is in the afternoon (1:00 pm to 11:59 pm). Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), there is no legal definition for what is considered full-time or part-time employment. Each employer makes the determination on what they consider to be part-time or full-time employment. With that said, most employers consider 30 hours or greater per week to be full-time.
Laura started her career in Finance a decade ago and provides strategic financial management consulting. She has an MBA in Finance and a Bachelor’s in Economics.Some people are short sleepers or long sleepers. A short sleeper may be just fine with less than seven hours of sleep. Long sleepers need more than nine hours to feel well-rested.
Cell phones and electronics should be avoided as much as possible. The artificial light from the screen can shift your sleep timing and make it harder to fall asleep.
Alfonsi V, Scarpelli S, D’Atri A, Stella G, De Gennaro L. Later school start time: The impact of sleep on academic performance and health in the adolescent population. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(7):2574. doi:10.3390/ijerph17072574A 2012 study showed that by the age of six, there were no differences in sleep measures between children whose parents let them “cry it out” and those who didn’t.
If you’re not getting the recommended amount of sleep for your age, you may want to build a better set of sleep habits to make it easier to meet a target bedtime. Short-term sleep aids might help, but if you think you have insomnia, talk to a healthcare provider. It’s important for your overall health.
It is normal not to meet your target bedtime or not to fall right to sleep from time to time. If trouble falling asleep becomes a pattern, you could be dealing with insomnia.
The amount of sleep you need each night changes over the course of your life. Therefore, your age can help you figure out what time you should go to bed in order to feel refreshed and able to function optimally during the day.
Consistent bedtime routines and relaxation techniques can also be helpful. A night routine prepares your mind and body for sleep, helping you unwind before you rest.
Insomnia can become more of a problem as you age. The National Institute on Aging reports that menopause, restless leg syndrome, dementia, and sleep apnea can all keep you awake or disrupt your sleep after age 60. If you think a health condition may be keeping you up, talk to a healthcare professional or sleep specialist.
Watson NF, Badr MS, Belenky G, et al. Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society. Sleep. 2015;38(6):843-844. doi:10.5665/sleep.4716Price AM, Wake M, Ukoumunne OC, Hiscock H. Outcomes at six years of age for children with infant sleep problems: longitudinal community-based study. Sleep Med. 2012;13(8):991-998. doi:10.1016/j.sleep.2012.04.014
Schedules, wake times, and even sleep needs can shift, so it helps to remain flexible. What one person needs may not be the same as someone else, even if their circumstances are similar.To decide what your bedtime should be, it’s important to think about how much sleep it takes to leave you feeling refreshed. That’s called your sleep need.
The term painsomnia has been applied to an inability to get a good sleep due to a painful underlying health condition such as arthritis or a chronic condition like fibromyalgia.
Children who have a hard time falling asleep may be experiencing behavioral insomnia. There are two types of behavioral insomnia—sleep-onset and limit-setting. Some children may have both types.One way to help your child with sleep-onset insomnia is to build your child’s ability to self-soothe. Some experts recommend letting your child “cry it out.” This method involves gradually increasing the intervals when you go in to comfort your child. For example, parents can comfort a crying child every five minutes, then gradually extend the period to ten minutes, then fifteen, and so on.
For adults, insomnia can be due to genetics. It can also be related to sleep disorders like sleep apnea or psychological conditions such as anxiety and depression.
Good sleep hygiene starts during the day. Try to avoid daytime naps. They reduce your overall sleep debt, but they also reduce the drive to go to sleep.
Sleep-onset insomnia usually means a child has become dependent on certain soothing routines or objects and “needs” them to fall asleep. They may also need these routines if they wake in the middle of the night.
The time that you should wake up will depend on your schedule and how many hours of sleep you require to feel well-rested. If you need to be awake at 8 a.m. to leave for work at 9 a.m., the ideal time to go to sleep is likely around 11 p.m. This amount can differ from one person to another. Your bedroom can help you fall asleep and sleep more soundly. For most people, it’s a good idea to start with a quiet, cool, and dark room. You should also consider whether your mattress and bedding are hurting or helping your quest for a steady bedtime. Lowden A, Lemos NAM, Gonçalves BSB, et al. Delayed sleep in winter related to natural daylight exposure among arctic day workers. Clocks Sleep. 2018;1(1):105-116. doi:10.3390/clockssleep1010010It’s important to note that experts don’t agree about the best way to help a child fall asleep independently. Some evidence shows that when children “cry it out,” the stress hormone cortisol goes up and stays up in their bodies for days afterward. Some parents also find this technique too stressful.
How many hours is 8 to 4 am?
8 hours 8am to 4pm is 8 hours – calculate time between any two hours while you type.
To go to bed earlier, create and follow a routine each night. Meditation, reading a book, and a warm shower or bath can make you relaxed and ready for sleep. Try to avoid using your phone or computer for at least 30 minutes before going to sleep, since blue light emitted from an electronic device can make falling asleep more difficult. Avoid taking a nap during the afternoon. When you are about to go to sleep, turn off every light in the room, be sure the room temperature is slightly cool, block external noise using earplugs or a white noise machine, and only use your bed for sleeping.
About 75% of teens don’t get enough sleep. Early school start times, late-night social activities, digital device use, and sleep cycle shifts all play a role. Neighborhoods in which there are not enough trees and too much noise can also delay sleep, researchers have found.
The idea is that we all have an internal, or “master” clock that controls the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. Exposure to light during the day causes this master clock to generate alertness. At night, it promotes the production of melatonin, which helps you fall asleep and stay asleep.Haack M, Simpson N, Sethna N, Kaur S, Mullington J. Sleep deficiency and chronic pain: potential underlying mechanisms and clinical implications. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2020;45(1):205-216. doi:10.1038/s41386-019-0439-z
Paruthi S, Brooks LJ, D’Ambrosio C, et al. Recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations: A consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. J Clin Sleep Med. 2016;12(6):785–786. doi:10.5664/jcsm.5866
The National Sleep Foundation says most adults should aim for seven to nine hours of sleep, or an average of eight hours. However, not everyone necessarily needs to put in these hours during the same window of time.Just as your dietary needs change at different ages, your need for sleep changes throughout your life. The need for sleep is greatest for babies and young children. Teens need extra sleep, too. Most adults need seven to nine hours daily.
Children need more sleep than adults to feel adequately rested. For young adults and people recovering from sleep debt, sleeping more than nine hours a night might be helpful.
When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.If you want to know more about optimal bedtimes for you, consult a board-certified sleep medicine physician. The problem may be an underlying health condition, not your routines.
Mayne SL, Morales KH, Williamson AA, Grant SFA, Fiks AG, Basner M, Dinges DF, Zemel BS, Mitchell JA. Associations of the residential built environment with adolescent sleep outcomes. Sleep. 2021;44(6):zsaa276. doi:10.1093/sleep/zsaa276Limit-setting insomnia most commonly happens when a caregiver doesn’t set consistent bedtime rules and keep a regular bedtime. The problem can get worse if the child begins to oppose or fight against bedtime routines. Spending time outdoors, in sunlight, may also be helpful. Studies show outside light exposure during the day can prevent a delay in falling asleep. Of course, there’s such a thing as too much daylight exposure. This is especially true in Arctic regions where it’s light at night during summer. Hirshkowitz M, Whiton K, Albert SM, et al. National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health. 2015;1(1):40-43. doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010The good news is that there are several ways to treat insomnia in adults. Medications can be useful as a temporary solution. If you want to avoid medications, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI) is often an effective option.
How many hours are in a 9 to 5?
The traditional American business hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, representing a workweek of five eight-hour days comprising 40 hours in total. These are the origin of the phrase 9-to-5, used to describe a conventional and possibly tedious job.
Reading, listening to soft music, stretching, or taking a bath can all help you relax. It is best to avoid overstimulating activities before bed, like watching television or exercising.In 1866, the Labor union mandated that Congress pass a law limiting the work day to 8 hours, which didn’t happen until the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938. Different policies and regulations exist on the topic of requirement and calculation in terms of breaks in an 8-hour day — depending on factors such as: On the other hand, there are periods dedicated to meals, longer breaks that last at least half an hour, which are not counted as time spent working, therefore being not compensable.One way to work on preventing the two is by working on one’s time management skills. By using a proper time management system, we are able to understand there’s more to life than work. Moreover, as we get a better understanding of our required tasks it’s easier to prioritize them to achieve balance.
Well, according to a CNBC article, 48% of workers believe their team productivity is higher in a work-from-home setting, compared to in-office work. Many other aspects are being examined since the pandemic started and Wired suggests people are most productive if they work for only 5 hours per day.
Another important aspect of “working smarter” is related to an individual worker’s motivation. It can be a difficult goal to achieve, especially without external benefits but, bear in mind, there are many useful methods to get and stay motivated.There are three categories of shifts, depending on the business hours — well, more precisely, depending on the duration of total hours during which a business is open.
Different types of tasks require different physical and mental activities so it’s essential to find the optimal time to perform each, as to be most efficient.
There are several ways for an employee to track the length of their shift and the first thing to determine is whether your employer requests a specific way of time tracking. If your answer is no, the choice is all yours, depending on what your preferences are — paper-based, old school methods or the digital one.As various repetitive tasks have been automated, communication and collaboration tools have enabled faster progress, it turns out that period is unnecessarily long.
Businesses in our second category have two shifts — so workers’ schedule can point to either the morning or the afternoon shift. In some instances, the business will actually be open for the whole duration, while in others there will be a shift overlap. For example, many companies require their employees to count out their lunch break time, as it may be required by the law. If that is the case, then the employees should clock in only 7.5 hours instead. The length of 8 hours is one-third of a day. The average adult should dedicate between 7 and 9 hours to sleep, so if we add up 8 hours we spend at work, all that’s left is approximately 8 hours for other daily activities. That includes meals, daily hygiene tasks, socialization, going to the post office, grocery shopping, doing chores, etc.But once all the obvious advantages are embraced, research indicates people are actually more productive while working remotely. There is no time lost on commuting to work, and there are no chatty coworkers to distract you from working when you’re in the deep work zone.
There’s also a third category that is related to 24/7 operations, thus needing three shifts to cover the whole day — morning, evening, and night shifts.
When we examine the main differences between an 8-hour work day in-office and an 8-hour remote work day, several advantages point to the latter being more beneficial for the majority of workers.
Is it normal to sleep at 8 pm?
School-age children should go to bed between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. Teens should try to go to bed between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Adults should try to go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m.
Productivity statistics indicate that the use of time tracking SaaS helps individual workers understand how they allocate their time in a better way, boosting their productivity levels by up to a whopping 47%.
Here comes another way a time tracking software will boost productivity and improve your overall performance. It’s because you’ll be able to monitor and compare the results — how much time you spend on a certain task (first thing in the morning vs. after you’ve had lunch, for example).
One is to clock out for the duration of a lunch break and clock in again after. The other is to exclude the break time and add 7.5 hours to the moment you’ve clocked in.Here are several other productivity booster pro tips you can use to improve your daily routine and get all the work done, while regularly accomplishing to leave work on time:
Another one of the frequently asked questions about the calculation is related to possible differences in day and night shifts. The answer is that it depends, but with the focus being more on the difference in the compensation rate rather than tracking of an 8-hour shift.
Most state and government institutions are open for business on such a schedule, Monday to Friday — or at least when it comes to the service-oriented work with clients. Some common examples are educational institutions, post offices, courts, daycare centers, banks, etc. — and those are usually closed during weekends.
How many hours is 37.5 a week?
Somewhat longer than normal hours four days per week and a half day on the fifth day. For a thirty-seven and a half (37.5) hour work week, 8.5 hours Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesday is a 3.75-hour work day with the morning off.
The Deloitte-based automobile factory embraced shorter working hours and the move, despite being controversial at the moment, proved to be brilliant. Not only were the productivity levels significantly boosted but the employee engagement and loyalty levels skyrocketed as well. Henry Ford thus became one of the revolutionaries in the 40-hour workweek movement, setting the standard for others to follow.To better understand the possible future of the 8-hour workday, let’s go back to how it all started for a moment. In this section, we’ll tell you a story of how an 8-hour day, and therefore a 40-hour week, became a norm — and what we can except from this norm in the future of work.
What is a normal 8 hour work day?
What is an 8-hour shift? An 8-hour shift is a global norm that full-time employees are required to work daily, 5 days per week, for the total hours worked per week to equal 40, according to the same norm.
The math is quite simple if your only task is to add 8 hours from the moment you start working. However, there are several factors that can impact this.The impact of such long hours was reflected in the suboptimal physical health condition of workers, as well as abolished the opportunity for any kind of work-life balance.
However, the minimum wage across states varies and is relative because of differences in living standards across the states, in most cases directly reflecting the living costs.
Until the mid-1800s, a typical worker in the manufacturing industry was required to work between 10 and 16 hours per day, 6 days a week. That translates to working nearly 100 hours per week.Some other experiments also indicate that a 40-hour workweek is actually decreasing workers’ productivity levels — such as the one with an introduction of a 4-day workweek in Iceland. An 8-hour shift is a global norm that full-time employees are required to work daily, 5 days per week, for the total hours worked per week to equal 40, according to the same norm. Here’s a convenient weekly hours tracker, so you can make sure you’re within the 40-hour threshold (or get adequately compensated for your overtime hours).
Nowadays, as mental health as a topic becomes destigmatized, the awareness is increasingly raised and more and more people realize the importance of work-life balance.
When the 8-hour shift movement started in the early 1800s, a social reformer Robert Owen came up with the expression “Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”However, the adoption rates of remote, flexible, and hybrid work models are skyrocketing, especially since the global pandemic emerged. With the lack of distractions we’ve mentioned for the in-office setting, workers feel more in charge of their schedule and time in general.
Both mental and physical exhaustion increase the risks of injury at a workplace, reduce our attention span, and increase the margin of human error in general.
If your employer doesn’t adequately keep track of overtime, workers should do it themselves. The law clearly states that higher compensation is within everyone’s rights and there are no exceptions. Everyone should be adequately compensated for the time they’ve invested and in order to ensure that — one of the best methods is to start tracking time, whether your employer requires it or not. And, who knows — we all may end up working for only 5 hours per day — but until then, make sure you actually stop when your time tracker strikes 8:00:00.For that reason, it’s vital to make the most of that time and more importantly, properly calculate it to know when you’ve worked enough. Tracking your hours will not only prevent overworking, but also help you use your full potential and be the best version of yourself. Once you make a habit of tracking your daily hours, we suggest you start tracking time on a basis of individual tasks.
How many hours is 7 to 4 am?
7am to 4pm is 9 hours – calculate time between any two hours while you type. Cached
In the US, short breaks, lasting between 5 and 20 minutes, are not required by the federal law. However, if a company policy allows these short breaks meant for coffee or snacks, that period counts as compensable.The main reason is to prevent overworking and achieve the highest-quality performance at work. Both our bodies and our mind need time to refuel, so it’s our duty to nurture them.
Workers whose shifts are longer than 8 hours per day, or who have more than 40 hours per week are entitled to overtime compensation. Whatever the case is, overtime hours must be compensated at a 1.5 rate of a worker’s regular hourly rate, or higher than that.Full-time employees work 40h a week (including breaks). However, people often end up working longer. Here’s a 8-hour work day calculator that will show you when it’s time to finish (plus a 7.5h calculator with breaks excluded).The first category is the “morning-shift-only”, where the business opens between 7 and 9 a.m. and closes for the day accordingly, between 3 and 5 p.m. You must’ve heard about the nine-to-five schedule — and that’s precisely what we’re referring to.We’ll cover the most frequently asked question, such as should break time be calculated within an 8-hour shift — but first, let’s check out what an 8-hour shift is, and which types of it exist.
There are many benefits that start with better understanding of how a person allocates their time during the day. It’s a key to maximizing your productivity levels, which is especially relevant for adequately managing your workload. 7am to 3pm is how many hours? Typically, you need to find a calculator, calculate the hours worked and then copy it over. This process takes time and you can easily make mistakes. Need to just type the hours and minutes, without the full sentence? No problem! The snippet below behaves exactly like the snippet above, but the output is just a number – the hours and minutes. Give it a try!7am to 4pm is how many hours? Typically, you need to find a calculator, calculate the hours worked and then copy it over. This process takes time and you can easily make mistakes.Calculator, how many time in weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds has passed since a certain date. Preset are the beginning of the current day and the current date, these can be changed at will. The time past since then and the amount in weeks, in days, in hours, in minutes and in seconds will be calculated.
The official (according to an American, Australian and British dictionary), and most common, spelling for AM is “ante meridiem” which is a Latin phrase. I recommend that spelling!
But people sometimes use the phrase “ante meridian” (a “meridian” in this case refers to an imaginary line in the sky when the sun is at its highest point).
Articles 161 to 167 of the Substantive Work Code in Colombia provide for a maximum of 48 hours of work a week. Also, the law notes that workdays should be divided into 2 sections to allow a break, usually given as the meal time which is not counted as work. Typically, there is a 2-hours break for lunch that starts from 12:00 through 13:00. In June 2021, the Colombian Congress approved a bill for the reduction of the work-week, from 48 to 42 hours, which will be implemented in several stages, from 2023 to 2026.
By 1946, the United States government had inaugurated the 40-hour work week for all federal employees. Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion that would let it “siphon off” a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union. In his 1951 Annual Message to the Congress, President Truman stated:Employees typically receive either 12 or 14 payments per year, with approximately 21 days of vacation. According to Spanish law, Spain holds what is known as the Convenios-Colectivos, which stipulates that different regulations and laws regarding employee work week and wage apply based on the type of job. Overall they rank as the 13th highest in regard to international GDP growth.
Between 1950 and 2007 official price inflation was measured to 861 percent. President Truman, in his 1951 message to Congress, predicted correctly that his military buildup “will cause intense and mounting inflationary pressures.” Using the data provided by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. According to Rauch, “if productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week.”Working hours are regulated by law. Mandatory logging of employee working time has been in place since 2019 in an attempt by legislators to eliminate unpaid overtime and push for more transparency of actual working hours. Non-regulated pauses during the workday for coffee or smoking are not permitted to be documented as working time, according to a ruling by The Spanish National Court in February 2020.
How many hours is 8am to 5pm with lunch?
there are 9 hours.
Yip Siu-fai, Professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration of HKU, has noted that professions such as nursing and accountancy have long working hours and that this may affect people’s social life. He believes that standard working hours could help to give Hong Kong more family-friendly workplaces and to increase fertility rates. Randy Chiu, Professor of the Department of Management of HKBU, has said that introducing standard working hours could avoid excessively long working hours of employees. He also said that nowadays Hong Kong attains almost full employment, has a high rental price and severe inflation, recently implemented minimum wage, and is affected by a gloomy global economy; he also mentioned that comprehensive considerations on macroeconomic situations are needed, and emphasized that it is perhaps inappropriate to adopt working-time regulation as exemplified in other countries to Hong Kong.Technology has also continued to improve worker productivity, permitting standards of living to rise as hours decline. In developed economies, as the time needed to manufacture goods has declined, more working hours have become available to provide services, resulting in a shift of much of the workforce between sectors.Mexican laws mandate a maximum of 48 hours of work per week, but they are rarely observed or enforced due to loopholes in the law, the volatility of labor rights in Mexico, and its underdevelopment relative to other members countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Indeed, private sector employees often work overtime without receiving overtime compensation. Fear of unemployment and threats by employers explain in part why the 48-hour work week is disregarded.Working (laboring) time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week.Hong Kong has no legislation regarding maximum and normal working hours. The average weekly working hours of full-time employees in Hong Kong is 49 hours. According to the Price and Earnings Report 2012 conducted by UBS, while the global and regional average were 1,915 and 2,154 hours per year respectively, the average working hours in Hong Kong is 2,296 hours per year, which ranked the fifth longest yearly working hours among 72 countries under study. In addition, from the survey conducted by the Public Opinion Study Group of the University of Hong Kong, 79% of the respondents agree that the problem of overtime work in Hong Kong is “severe”, and 65% of the respondents support the legislation on the maximum working hours. In Hong Kong, 70% of surveyed do not receive any overtime remuneration. These show that people in Hong Kong concerns the working time issues. As Hong Kong implemented the minimum wage law in May 2011, the Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, of the Special Administrative Region pledged that the government will standardize working hours in Hong Kong.
How many hours are from 7 am to 3 pm?
8 hours 7am to 3pm is 8 hours – calculate time between any two hours while you type.
In most European Union countries, working time is gradually decreasing. The European Union’s working time directive imposes a 48-hour maximum working week that applies to every member state except Malta (which have an opt-out, meaning that employees in Malta may work longer than 48 hours if they wish, but they cannot be forced to do so). A major reason for the lower annual hours worked in Europe is a relatively high amount of paid annual leave. Fixed employment comes with four to six weeks of holiday as standard.The Chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Chow Chung-kong believes that it is so difficult to implement standard working hours that apply “across-the-board”, specifically, to accountants and barristers. In addition, he believes that standard working hours may decrease individual employees’ working hours and would not increase their actual income. It may also lead to an increase of number of part-timers in the labor market.
How many hours is 11 to 4?
There are 8 full hours between these times. It also supports the subtraction of lunch breaks and other types of pauses from the total hours in between.
Elizabeth Quat of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), believed that standard working hours were a labor policy and was not related to family-friendly policies. The Vice President of Young DAB, Wai-hung Chan, stated that standard working hours would bring limitations to small and medium enterprises. He thought that the government should discuss the topic with the public more before legislating standard working hours. South Korea has the fastest shortening working time in the OECD, which is the result of the government’s proactive move to lower working hours at all levels and to increase leisure and relaxation time, which introduced the mandatory forty-hour, five-day working week in 2004 for companies with over 1,000 employees. Beyond regular working hours, it is legal to demand up to 12 hours of overtime during the week, plus another 16 hours on weekends. The 40-hour workweek expanded to companies with 300 employees or more in 2005, 100 employees or more in 2006, 50 or more in 2007, 20 or more in 2008 and a full inclusion to all workers nationwide in July 2011. The government has continuously increased public holidays to 16 days in 2013, more than the 10 days of the United States and double that of the United Kingdom’s 8 days. Despite those efforts, South Korea’s work hours are still relatively long, with an average 1,967 hours per year in 2019. The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday to Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. Sunday is set aside in the western world because it is the Christian sabbath.The main labor law in Spain, the Workers’ Statute Act, limits the amount of working time that an employee is obliged to perform. In the Article 34 of this law, a maximum of 9 hours per day and 40 hours per week are established.
The Labour Party believed regulating working hours could help achieve a work–life balance. It suggests an 8-hour work day, a 44-hour standard work week, a 60-hour maximum work week and an overtime pay of 1.5 times the usual pay.In terms of manpower, our present defense targets will require an increase of nearly one million men and women in the armed forces within a few months, and probably not less than four million more in defense production by the end of the year. This means that an additional 8 percent of our labor force, and possibly much more, will be required by direct defense needs by the end of the year. These manpower needs will call both for increasing our labor force by reducing unemployment and drawing in women and older workers, and for lengthening hours of work in essential industries.
China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays. However, this rule has never been truly enforced, and unpaid or underpaid overtime working is common practice in China.
Francis Lui, Head and Professor of the Department of Economics of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believed that standard working hours may not lower work time but increase unemployment. He used Japan as an example to illustrate that the implementation of standard working hours lowered productivity per head and demotivated the economy. He also said that even if the standard working hours can shorten employees’ weekly working hours, they may need to work for more years to earn sufficient amount of money for retirement, i.e. delay their retirement age. The total working time over the course of a lifetime may not change.
Most countries in the developed world have seen average hours worked decrease significantly. For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week. Today the average hours worked in the U.S. is around 33, with the average man employed full-time for 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time for 7.9 hours per work day. The front runners for lowest average weekly work hours are the Netherlands with 27 hours, and France with 30 hours. In a 2011 report of 26 OECD countries, Germany had the lowest average working hours per week at 25.6 hours.
Generally, workers are paid time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times the worker’s base wage, for each hour of work past forty. California also applies this rule to work in excess of eight hours per day, but exemptions and exceptions significantly limit the applicability of this law.
Employer representative in the Labour Advisory Board, Stanley Lau, said that standard working hours will completely alter the business environment of Hong Kong, affect small and medium enterprise and weaken competitiveness of businesses. He believes that the government can encourage employers to pay overtime salary, and there is no need to regulate standard working hours.Workweek policies are not uniform in the U.S. Many compensation arrangements are legal, and three of the most common are wage, commission, and salary payment schemes. Wage earners are compensated on a per-hour basis, whereas salaried workers are compensated on a per-week or per-job basis, and commission workers get paid according to how much they produce or sell.
On 17–18 October 2012, the Legislative Council members in Hong Kong debated on the motion “legislation for the regulation of working hours”. Cheung Kwok-che proposed the motion “That is the Council urges the Government to introduce a bill on the regulation of working hours within this legislative session, the contents of which must include the number of standard weekly hours and overtime pay”. As the motion was not passed by both functional constituencies and geographical constituencies, it was negatived.
According to a study of the OECD Better Life Index, 4% of Spanish workers work more than 50 hours per week, compared to an average of 11% of workers in OECD countries.
Lunch breaks are one hour and are not usually counted as work. A typical work schedule is 8:00 or 9:00–12:00, 13:00–18:00. In larger cities, workers eat lunch on or near their work site, while some workers in smaller cities may go home for lunch. In some states, firms are required to pay double-time, or twice the base rate, for each hour of work past 60, or each hour of work past 12 in one day in California, also subject to numerous exemptions and exceptions. This provides an incentive for companies to limit working time, but makes these additional hours more desirable for the worker. It is not uncommon for overtime hours to be accepted voluntarily by wage-earning workers. Unions often treat overtime as a desirable commodity when negotiating how these opportunities shall be partitioned among union members. In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours.The traditional American business hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, representing a workweek of five eight-hour days comprising 40 hours in total. These are the origin of the phrase 9-to-5, used to describe a conventional and possibly tedious job. Negatively used, it connotes a tedious or unremarkable occupation. The phrase also indicates that a person is an employee, usually in a large company, rather than an entrepreneur or self-employed. More neutrally, it connotes a job with stable hours and low career risk, but still a position of subordinate employment. The actual time at work often varies between 35 and 48 hours in practice due to the inclusion, or lack of inclusion, of breaks. In many traditional white collar positions, employees were required to be in the office during these hours to take orders from the bosses, hence the relationship between this phrase and subordination. Workplace hours have become more flexible, but the phrase is still commonly used even in situations where the term does not apply literally.Member of Economic Synergy, Jeffery Lam, believes that standard working hours would adversely affect productivity, tense the employer-employee relationship, and increase the pressure faced by businesses who suffer from inadequate workers. He does not support the regulation on working hours at its current situation.On 26 November 2012, the Labour Department of the HKSAR released the “Report of the policy study on standard working hours”. The report covers three major areas, including: (1) the regimes and experience of other places in regulating working hours, (2) latest working time situations of employees in different sectors, and (3) estimation of the possible impact of introducing standard working hour in Hong Kong. Under the selected parameters, from most loosen to most stringent, the estimated increase in labour cost vary from 1.1 billion to 55 billion HKD, and affect 957,100 (36.7% of total employees) to 2,378,900 (91.1% of total) employees.The following list is the average annual hours worked by participants in the labor force of the OECD member states. As of 2022, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica ranked the highest number of hours worked per year. Greece ranked the highest In EU with 1886 average hours per year, while Germany ranked the lowest with 1340 average hours worked respectively. Japan and Canada ranked lowest amongst non-European countries.Brazil has a 44-hour work week, normally 8 hours per day and 4 hours on Saturday or 8.8 hours per day. Jobs with no meal breaks or on-duty meal breaks are 6 hours per day. Public servants work 40 hours per week.
The Civic party suggests “to actively study setting weekly standard working hours at 44 hours to align with family-friendly policies” in LegCo Election 2012.
Under most circumstances, wage earners and lower-level employees may be legally required by an employer to work more than forty hours in a week; however, they are paid extra for the additional work. Many salaried workers and commission-paid sales staff are not covered by overtime laws. These are generally called “exempt” positions, because they are exempt from federal and state laws that mandate extra pay for extra time worked. The rules are complex, but generally exempt workers are executives, professionals, or sales staff. For example, school teachers are not paid extra for working extra hours. Business owners and independent contractors are considered self-employed, and none of these laws apply to them.Many professional workers put in longer hours than the forty-hour standard. In professional industries like investment banking and large law firms, a forty-hour workweek is considered inadequate and may result in job loss or failure to be promoted. Medical residents in the United States routinely work long hours as part of their training. Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, the Secretary for Labour and Welfare Bureau, said the Executive Council has already received the government report on working hours in June, and the Labour Advisory Board and the LegCo’s Manpower Panel will receive the report in late November and December respectively. On 26 November 2012, the Labour Department released the report, and the report covered the regimes and experience of practicing standard working hours in selected regions, current work hour situations in different industries, and the impact assessment of standard working hours. Also, Matthew Cheung mentioned that the government will form a select committee by first quarter of 2013, which will include government officials, representative of labor unions and employers’ associations, academics and community leaders, to investigate the related issues. He also said that it would “perhaps be unrealistic” to put forward a bill for standard working hours in the next one to two years. Since the 1960s, the consensus among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agrarian societies; for instance, one camp of !Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day. Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours.Standard working hours (or normal working hours) refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. The employer pays higher rates for overtime hours as required in the law. Standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 40 to 44 hours per week (but not everywhere: from 35 hours per week in France to up to 105 hours per week in North Korean labor camps) and the additional overtime payments are around 25% to 50% above the normal hourly payments. Maximum working hours refers to the maximum working hours of an employee. The employee cannot work more than the level specified in the maximum working hours law.