Greeks work on weekends too

Greeks are the champions of weekend employment in Europe, with Eurostat data showing that one in three workers in this country (32.3%) works seven days a week, either because their profession requires it or because they need it to meet their obligations.

Moreover, the structure of employment in Greece, especially the high percentage of self-employed people, the country’s economic dependence on tourism and consequently work in the food service and tourism sectors in shifts, weekends and holidays, as well as mainly informal, flexible employment without fixed hours and contracts, partly explains this finding.

In practice, of course, long hours and unregulated work, in addition to circumventing the legislation, results in the exhaustion of Greeks, without any financial return, as salaries remain low, with the average salary amounting to 1,342 euros gross.

According to official Eurostat data (for 2023), Greece comes first in the EU in terms of employment on weekends and almost 10 points higher than the European average (22.4%) in terms of work on Saturday and Sunday.

Below Greece, also with high rates, are Italy (30.9%) and Cyprus (26.4%). 

Across the European Union, per Eurostat, weekend work is most common in occupations related to agriculture, forestry and fishing (49.5%). This is followed by workers in services and sales (48.9%), which includes employment in both the tourism and catering sectors and retail trade.

In relation to the nature of employment, almost half of self-employed people (46.7%) declare that they work on Saturday or Sunday.

Greece has one of the highest rates of self-employment in the EU, with many shopkeepers (most of whom do not even employ another employee or someone from their family), freelancers and farmers often working on weekends, since they do not have fixed hours and are directly dependent on their personal presence for the survival of the business. In 2022, 27.3% of employees in Greece were self-employed, one of the highest in the EU, with the European average at 13.2%.

Kathimerini