Pauli Sumanen, 2013:

Productive yearly working hours of full time working employees in Finland.

Why is this information needed?

1. According to EU Parliament resolution 2008/2012 working hours (hours when the worker is physically present in the workplace) must be taken into account when the gender wage gap is calculated.

2. The Finnish working time law gives restrictions to working hours of the employees

Productive yearly working hours of full time working employees in Finland.

What information is currently available?

Answer: Not very much.

The official statistics of Statistics Finland does not give us figures of yearly working hours of full time working male and female employees

From the book 'Työelämän suurten muutosten vuosikymmenet' (The Decades of Big Changes in Working Life) you can find the figures: Full time working men work 1800 hours per year, women 1600 hours (page 118). Study of Päivi Keinänen. Her study is based on the data from the Labour Force Survey 2008 of Statistics Finland.

Some information is explicitely got from the figure: Working hours per sector, (Tilastokeskus: 'Selvitys työaikojen tilastoinnista Suomessa ja kansainvälisesti', Laura Hulkko, 'Working times in the Labour Force Survey of Finland', page 25)

Tilastokeskus (Statistics Finland): Iiris Niemi, Hannu Pääkkönen: 'Ajankäytön muutokset 1990-luvulla', (Changes in time use between 1990-2000): 1999-2000

Collartype

Upper white

Lower white

Blue All (my calcul)

Menhours

1965 1849 1904 1908,5

Women hours

1442 1563 1479 1515,7

Men1000

261 211 478 950

Women 1000

236 547 214 997

Pauli Sumanen 2013

Two new studies of weekly/yearly working hours of full time working male and female employees

1. Weekly/yearly working hours from the Time Use Survey of Statistics Finland 3/1999 – 2/2000

2. Weekly/yearly working hours from the Labour Force Survey of Statistics Finland IV / 2007

Time Use Survey 1999-2000

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

1-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-

Weekly working hours

Full

time

empl

oyee

s

Men

Women

Study 1, Pauli Sumanen, 2013: Weekly working hours of full time working male and female employees

Time Use Survey 1999-2000

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Short week (1-35 h) Normal week (36-40 h) Low overtime (41-44 h) High overtime (45-49h)

Extreme week (over 50h)

Men %

Women %

Study 1, Pauli Sumanen, 2013: Weekly working hours of full time working male and female employees

Results from study 1

• Result 1: 72, 3 % of full time working men did a week with more than 36 hours, 59, 4 % of women.

• Result 2: Only one week from three was ”normal” (36-40 hours) during the year

• Result 3: Men did 15-20 % more working hours per year than women

Study 2. Weekly working hours from the Labour Force Survey IV/2007

Labour Force Survey IV / 2007

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

0 1-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70 -

Hours/ week

Men

Women

Study 2: Weekly working hours of full time working men and women per week type

Labour Force Survey IV / 2007

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Short 0-35 Normal 36-40 Low overtime 41-44 High overtime 45-49 Extreme 50 -

Week type

%

Men %

Women %

Results from study 2

• Result 1: 81,1 % of men did more than 36 hours/week, of women 71,8 %

• Result 2: Men did 15-20 % more working hours per week/year than women

• Result 3: Results from study 2 differ strongly from study 1. Study 2 is a phone call survey, study 1 is a weekly manual time diary survey

Verification of results from studies 1 and 2

TUS = T ime Use Survey 1999-2000, LFS = Labour Force Survey IV/ 2007

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Shor t 1-35 Nor mal 36-40 Low over time 41-44 High over time 45-49 E xtr eme 50-

week type

Men T US

Men LFS

Women T US

Women LFS

Do employees remember their working hours from previous week/week before the

last?

• In the survey values 45,50,…80 got 174 hits, average is 21,75

• In the survey values 46,47,48,49,51, 52…79 got 118 hits, average is 3,7

• We note that the employees cannot tell reliably in the phone call Labour Force Survey, how many hours they have worked during the previous week/ week before the last.

Legal aspects of weekly working hoursIn the Finnish working time law there is a restriction

that a normal week is max. 40 hours. Moreover you can do overtime work 250 hours and locally negotiating 80 hours. If we have 46 working weeks per year that means 2170 hours per year = 47,2 hours per week.

About 15 % of men and 5 % work weekly more than 50 hours. Do they work against the spirit of the law? Not all, because you can work less next week.

The book Julkunen Raija - Nätti Jouko - Anttila Timo: Aikanyrjähdys (The time is shifted), Keskiluokka työn puristuksessa (The middle class in the press of work) tells that in the white collar middle class 23 % of men and 12 % of women worked ”normally” more than 50 hours per week.

So it seems obvious that a significant amount of the employees work against the spirit of the law.

In Helsingin Sanomat Kuukausiliite 7/2011 there was an interwiev of world famous brain surgeon Juha Hernesniemi.

He goes to work at 5 am every morning and says that he works in a ”normal” week about 100 hours. He operates 400-500 patients per year. Until now he has had about 13 000 operations and he thinks that he continues his work until he is about 73 years of age.

Is he a hero or stealing work from others?