South Korea's annual working hours last year totaled 1,833, 96 more than the OECD average

[Financial News] The average annual working hours of employed people in South Korea fell by 32 hours from a year earlier to 1,833 hours last year. The downward trend continues as the government pushes to reduce actual working hours, but workers in the country are still putting in about 100 more hours than the average across the 36 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). South Korea is also classified as the sixth-longest-working country among OECD members. To reach the goal of bringing actual working hours down to the 1,700-hour range by 2030, many say the government needs to implement more effective policies.
According to OECD data released on the 5th, South Korea's average annual working hours last year were 1,833, down 32 hours from 1,865 in 2024. Working hours in the country have been on a steady decline. They fell from 2,163 hours in 2010 to 2,082 hours in 2015, and then dropped below 2,000 hours for the first time in 2018, when the 52-hour workweek took effect, at 1,992 hours. Since then, the figure has continued to decline every year, reaching 1,900 hours in 2022, 1,872 in 2023, 1,865 in 2024, and 1,833 last year. The trend is seen as the combined result of the five-day workweek, the stabilization of the 52-hour workweek system, the designation of legal holidays as paid leave, and the expansion of substitute holiday rules.
However, compared with the OECD member-country average of 1,736 hours last year, South Koreans still worked 97 more hours. In global terms, the Republic of Korea remains among the countries with the longest working hours. In fact, among the 36 OECD members for which data were compiled last year, South Korea had the sixth-longest working hours. Only five countries worked more hours than South Korea: Mexico (2,205 hours), Costa Rica (2,183), Chile (1,912), Greece (1,874), and Israel (1,870).
By contrast, South Koreans worked 33 more hours than people in the United States (1,800 hours) and 200 more hours than those in Australia (1,633). They also spent 235 more hours at work than workers in Japan (1,598), 300 more than those in the United Kingdom (1,533), and 335 more than those in France (1,498). Compared with Germany, where working hours were the shortest at 1,332 hours, South Korean workers logged 501 more hours. Based on an eight-hour workday, that means South Korean workers went to work 63 more days a year than their German counterparts, excluding weekends.
The authorities plan to reduce actual working hours to the OECD average range of the 1,700s by 2030. In response, MOEL is accelerating efforts to implement its 'roadmap for reducing actual working hours,' which centers on establishing a 4.5-day workweek. After introducing guidelines in April to curb the misuse of comprehensive wage systems and eliminate unpaid wage practices, the ministry also plans to push for the swift passage of amendments to the Labor Standards Act, which are currently stalled in the National Assembly. It will also work on building a legal support framework to ensure that reductions in working hours are carried out in a stable and systematic way. The support legislation is expected to include measures that help companies improve productivity as they proactively adopt shorter work schedules such as a 4.5-day workweek. Other legislative tasks include institutional measures to protect workers' right to rest, such as banning unfair treatment for using annual leave.
However, some analysts say that structural reform of the rigid labor market must come first if working hours are to be reduced further. According to the final report of the forum on improving working-hour systems for a roadmap to cut actual working hours, prepared by the Korea Employment and Labor Relations Association under a research contract from MOEL, the main reason working hours remain long in South Korea is the uniformity of work arrangements. In South Korea, 53.1% of workers are on a 40-hour workweek, while the share is much lower in major countries such as Germany (30.9%), France (12.5%), and the United Kingdom (15.9%). This suggests that the Korean labor market remains heavily centered on full-time models such as the five-day workweek and eight-hour workdays. The association recommended that policymakers consider expanding workers' options in how they work and diversifying the units used to calculate working hours.

[email protected] Lee Hwan-ju Reporter