Scots are hardest workers in Britain

We graft two days a year longer than Londoners

SCOTS are the hardest-working people in Britain and put in the most hours, according to analysis published yesterday.

Carried out by a bank, it found that the Scots edged the hard-working league, thanks to the higher number of basic hours for which workers are contracted.

They also topped the list for the number of days they work each year – 287 – alongside people from East Anglia.

Scots work two days longer each year than Londoners and a week more than typical workers in the South-East of England – a finding which means that the richest areas of the country do not gain their wealth by working longer hours.

Scots and people in East Anglia put in a full ten days a year more when their hours are counted than workers in the part of the country where people work the fewest hours, Wales.

The report revealed that workers in Britain put two-and-a-half weeks more time into their jobs each year than workers in the rest of Europe.

The findings, calculated from figures produced by the Office for National Statistics by the thinkmoney bank, also highlight differences between regions in the way people are paid.

London employees rank only fifth in the hours league table, with their reputation as hard and ambitious workers pulled down by their low levels of paid overtime – only 176.8 hours a year, less than three-and-a-half hours a week.

However, many better rewarded London workers are expected to work long hours and their contracts do not provide for overtime pay for extra work.

Shorter working years in London and the South-East may also be a result of better-paid staff enjoying more weeks of holiday.

The thinkmoney report said only the South-East is marked lower than London for overtime; and the capital’s workers put in the same number of extra paid hours as counterparts in the South-West and the country’s least well-off region, the North-East.

The analysis added: ‘These figures only reflect paid overtime and it is possible that the unreported, unpaid figures could be much higher’.

The report suggested that if unpaid overtime done as part of white-collar jobs was paid, it would cost employers an extra £32billion a year.

‘Scotland and the East of England top the leaderboard for the longest hours worked in a year,’ the analysis added.

‘Employees in these regions report spending 38.6 hours at work a week, or 2,007.2 hours a year.’

Even in the regions where workers do the longest hours, the average time at work last year was more than a hour below the traditional benchmark of a 40-hour working week.

The annual hours count falls below the 40-hour point because of weeks taken out for holidays.

EU figures, based on weekly working hours, showed that UK employees averaged 42.3 hours a week in 2016, more than half an hour longer than the nearest rivals, in Cyprus, at 41.7 hours a week.

The EU average working week is 40.3 hours.

‘Differences between regions’