By: Staff Writer
October 2, 2026
Honduras has the highest work week in the Americas at 44.20 hours worked per week according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) with Jamaica and Guyana coming in at second and third with 43.45 and 43.29 hours worked per week.
The report, compiled by World Population Review, using ILO data, revealed that the average workweek worldwide can range from less than 40 hours in length to close to 50 hours. High-income and/or developed countries with a cultural emphasis on work/life balance and adequate leisure/family time generally have shorter official workweeks (some as short as four days) and more vacation days.
In contrast, countries with a longer work week, while often ranking as hard-working countries, usually have fewer worker protections, reduced amenities and a populace that is less happy and possibly overworked.
The Caribbean country with the shortest average work week was Barbados, with 34.47 hours per week on average.
With a 31.86-hour weekly average, Canadian citizens were listed as having the shortest work week in the region of the Americas, while the shortest globally was Yemen at an average of 22.95 hours per week.
The country with the highest work week was Bhutan at 54.68 hours worked per week. The country with the shortest work week was Yemen at 22.95 hours work per week.
As a rule, more high-income countries such as Germany and France enjoy shorter workweeks than do middle-income and developing countries. It is likely that work weeks in the low-income and least-developed countries are the longest of all, at least for those people who can find work, but reputable data are often difficult to obtain.
This suggests that the anomaly in Yemen being the lowest can be attributed to the ongoing unrest and civil war in the Middle Eastern country, which has made working an average week near impossible.
Among the countries with the longest workweeks, the prevailing trend is that most, if not all, are economies that have yet to fully mature. Cambodia, for example, is still reliant upon foreign aid. However, World Bank points out that Cambodia’s 80 percent rate of employment is higher than the average for East Asian countries (63 percent).
World Bank further estimates that the Cambodian economy can continue to expand if the country diversifies its exports, better supports small businesses, improves integration between industries (for instance, by utilizing domestically produced fabrics in the garment industry instead of importing them), and emphasizes training to develop a more skilled workforce.
All of these concerns could be classified as the growing pains of a still-developing economy, but one that also has promise.