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Data

Annual working hours per worker

Huberman and Minns, Penn World Table

What you should know about this indicator

  • This indicator combines data from Huberman and Minns (2005) (between 1870 and 1938) with the Penn World Table (1950 onward).
  • The definitions of working hours differ between the sources: while Huberman and Minns focus on full-time production workers in non-agricultural activities, Penn World Table data includes all employees and self-employed people in the economy.
  • Even considering these differences, the data from Huberman and Minns represents a good approximation of the average working hours in the past.
Annual working hours per worker
Huberman and Minns, Penn World Table
Average working hours per worker in a given year.
Source
Feenstra et al. - Penn World Table (2023); Huberman and Minns (2005) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 5, 2025
Next expected update
August 2026
Date range
1870–2019
Unit
hours per worker

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Feenstra et al. – Penn World Table

PWT version 10.01 is a database with information on relative levels of income, output, input and productivity, covering 183 countries between 1950 and 2019.

Retrieved on
July 31, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/productivity/pwt/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Feenstra, Robert C., Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer (2015), "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table" American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150-3182, available for download at www.ggdc.net/pwt

PWT version 10.01 is a database with information on relative levels of income, output, input and productivity, covering 183 countries between 1950 and 2019.

Retrieved on
July 31, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/productivity/pwt/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Feenstra, Robert C., Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer (2015), "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table" American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150-3182, available for download at www.ggdc.net/pwt

Huberman and Minns – Working hours (Huberman and Minns, 2005)

This paper brings a long-term perspective to the debate on the causes of worktime differences among OECD countries. Exploiting new data sets on hours of work per week, days at work per year, and annual work hours between 1870 and 2000, we challenge the conventional view that Europeans began to labor fewer hours than Americans only in the 1980s. Like Australians and Canadians, Americans tended to work longer hours, after controlling for income, beginning around 1900. Labor power and inequality, which are held to be important determinants of worktime after 1970, had comparable effects in the period before 1913. To explain the longstanding predisposition of the New World to give more labor time, we examine the effects of three initial factors in 1870, culture, human capital, and geography on hours of work in 2000. We find that geography – the low population density of the New World that has led to shorter commutes and lower fixed costs of getting to work – has had an enduring impact on supply of labor time.

Retrieved on
August 5, 2025
Retrieved from
https://ideas.repec.org/p/iis/dispap/iiisdp95.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Huberman, M., & Minns, C. (2005). Hours of Work in Old and New Worlds: The Long View, 1870-2000. Tables 1, 2, and 3. The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp95, IIIS.

This paper brings a long-term perspective to the debate on the causes of worktime differences among OECD countries. Exploiting new data sets on hours of work per week, days at work per year, and annual work hours between 1870 and 2000, we challenge the conventional view that Europeans began to labor fewer hours than Americans only in the 1980s. Like Australians and Canadians, Americans tended to work longer hours, after controlling for income, beginning around 1900. Labor power and inequality, which are held to be important determinants of worktime after 1970, had comparable effects in the period before 1913. To explain the longstanding predisposition of the New World to give more labor time, we examine the effects of three initial factors in 1870, culture, human capital, and geography on hours of work in 2000. We find that geography – the low population density of the New World that has led to shorter commutes and lower fixed costs of getting to work – has had an enduring impact on supply of labor time.

Retrieved on
August 5, 2025
Retrieved from
https://ideas.repec.org/p/iis/dispap/iiisdp95.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Huberman, M., & Minns, C. (2005). Hours of Work in Old and New Worlds: The Long View, 1870-2000. Tables 1, 2, and 3. The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp95, IIIS.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We selected the data from Huberman and Minns (2005) for the period between 1870 and 1938, and combined it with the entire Penn World Table dataset (indicator avh).

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Annual working hours per worker”, part of the following publication: Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2020) - “Working Hours”. Data adapted from Feenstra et al., Huberman and Minns. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250811-145851/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker.html [online resource] (archived on August 11, 2025).
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Feenstra et al. - Penn World Table (2023); Huberman and Minns (2005) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Feenstra et al. - Penn World Table (2023); Huberman and Minns (2005) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Annual working hours per worker – Huberman and Minns, Penn World Table” [dataset]. Feenstra et al., “Penn World Table 10.01”; Huberman and Minns, “Working hours (Huberman and Minns, 2005)” [original data]. Retrieved August 11, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250811-145851/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker.html (archived on August 11, 2025).