International comparison Australia has a higher proportion of people working long-hour jobs than many other OECD countries. While the trend to working long hours has also occurred in a number of other countries, as shown below, this trend has not been uniform. Employment in long-hour jobs has also been falling in some countries. Most OECD countries have legislated maximum weekly working hours of between 48 and 60 hours. Australia, like Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, has no legal maximum.
Employers are able to offer employees heavy workloads and employees are free to accept such offers.
The OECD Economic Outlook report, from which these data have been obtained, also reveals that like Australia, the trend to short-hour employment has been occurring in many other countries. These reforms have been oriented to realising working time reductions for employees working long hours. Information from ABS time use surveys conducted in 1992 and 1997 indicate that this has occurred, although the magnitude of change over these five years has not been large. A slight increase in the proportion of people working on weekends also occurred. This more widespread access to flexible working hours may mean that a greater proportion of employees paid to work approximately 40 hours a week are able to work less than 35 hours in one week and more than 44 the next according to workload and personal preference.