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This is how much more work Londoners do than the rest of the UK

It's a big slog in the big smoke

This is how much more work Londoners do than the rest of the UK
18 April 2017

Oh, London: to some a yellow-bricked road to opportunity, to others somewhere you'll either be mugged or not appreciated.  

But whatever you think: Londoners are doing a lot of work. 100 hours a year more than the rest of the UK, in fact, according to new figures from the Office of National Statistics.

The city’s young demographic means that everyone’s working way longer than the rest of the country – and the concentration of industries like financial services only makes it worse. 

Londoners – including part-timers – work a 33 hour week, on average: the longest working week since the financial crisis in 2008. The rest of the UK is averaging around 31 hours per week. 

In all seriousness: this is actually bad, and not just because being at work is really fucking boring, either. Loads of people in London are working long hours because of the city’s high (read: ridiculous) cost of living. Others are working long hours to make up the cost of their commute to work – Londoners have the longest commute in the UK, according to the BBC, and spend about 75 minutes a day travelling to and from work.

The BBC also points out that long working hours are linked to “deteriorating physical and mental health”; Green Party rep Sian Berry told them that long hours, “impacts on the time you spend on taking care of yourself”. Bad, obviously. Bad. But hey, who even needs quality of life when there’s so many avocado-themed brunch pop-ups?

There is a bright side, though: UK working hours are shorter than in the USA, Turkey and New Zealand! So you may be working almost illegally long hours in order to live in a tiny shitty room full of mould and damp but hey, it could be worse! Probably!