Work-Life Balance by country
Percentage of dependent employees working very long hours (50+ hours per week). High values indicate structural overwork that erodes family time, leisure, and mental recovery. Korea (26.5%) and Türkiye (28.1%) lead globally; Netherlands and Sweden under 1%.
Global trend
Mean stress score across all countries for which data is available, over the last 12 months.
Where the pressure is concentrated
The five most-affected and five least-affected countries on this indicator right now.
Most affected
- 1Turkey28.1 % employees 50h+/week93
- 2South Korea26.5 % employees 50h+/week88
- 3Mexico26.5 % employees 50h+/week88
- 4Argentina21.0 % employees 50h+/week69
- 5Singapore18.5 % employees 50h+/week60
Least affected
- 1Sweden1.00 % employees 50h+/week0
- 2Netherlands0.40 % employees 50h+/week0
- 3Norway2.60 % employees 50h+/week6
- 4Canada3.70 % employees 50h+/week9
- 5Spain4.00 % employees 50h+/week10
Full ranking
All 25 tracked countries, ordered from most to least affected. Click any country to see its full composite breakdown.
| # | Country | Raw value | Stress score | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey | 28.1 % employees 50h+/week | 93.4 | 2024-12-31 |
| 2 | South Korea | 26.5 % employees 50h+/week | 87.9 | 2024-12-31 |
| 3 | Mexico | 26.5 % employees 50h+/week | 87.9 | 2024-12-31 |
| 4 | Argentina | 21.0 % employees 50h+/week | 69.0 | 2024-12-31 |
| 5 | Singapore | 18.5 % employees 50h+/week | 60.3 | 2024-12-31 |
| 6 | UAE | 18.0 % employees 50h+/week | 58.6 | 2024-12-31 |
| 7 | Japan | 17.8 % employees 50h+/week | 57.9 | 2024-12-31 |
| 8 | South Africa | 16.2 % employees 50h+/week | 52.4 | 2024-12-31 |
| 9 | Israel | 14.6 % employees 50h+/week | 46.9 | 2024-12-31 |
| 10 | India | 14.5 % employees 50h+/week | 46.6 | 2024-12-31 |
| 11 | New Zealand | 13.2 % employees 50h+/week | 42.1 | 2024-12-31 |
| 12 | Australia | 12.5 % employees 50h+/week | 39.7 | 2024-12-31 |
| 13 | United Kingdom | 12.2 % employees 50h+/week | 38.6 | 2024-12-31 |
| 14 | United States | 10.0 % employees 50h+/week | 31.0 | 2024-12-31 |
| 15 | Italy | 9.50 % employees 50h+/week | 29.3 | 2024-12-31 |
| 16 | France | 8.00 % employees 50h+/week | 24.1 | 2024-12-31 |
| 17 | Brazil | 7.60 % employees 50h+/week | 22.8 | 2024-12-31 |
| 18 | Germany | 5.30 % employees 50h+/week | 14.8 | 2024-12-31 |
| 19 | Poland | 5.10 % employees 50h+/week | 14.1 | 2024-12-31 |
| 20 | Switzerland | 4.40 % employees 50h+/week | 11.7 | 2024-12-31 |
| 21 | Spain | 4.00 % employees 50h+/week | 10.3 | 2024-12-31 |
| 22 | Canada | 3.70 % employees 50h+/week | 9.3 | 2024-12-31 |
| 23 | Norway | 2.60 % employees 50h+/week | 5.5 | 2024-12-31 |
| 24 | Netherlands | 0.40 % employees 50h+/week | 0.0 | 2024-12-31 |
| 25 | Sweden | 1.00 % employees 50h+/week | 0.0 | 2024-12-31 |
Why it matters
Work-Life Balance is a contributing indicator to the Social meta-index, one of the five dimensions of The Human Index composite. Higher raw value = more stress.
Movements in this indicator are tracked daily and feed into every country's composite score on the next cron cycle.
Recent analysis
All Pulses →Source & methodology
Raw values are normalized to a 0–100 stress scale per the bounds documented in the codebase. See methodology for the full normalization and band-threshold derivation.