GENEVA, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Full-time workers in Switzerland remain among the most industrious in Europe, but they are not the most hardworking.
They only made it to the second spot in terms of hard work, the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) said this week.
In an international comparison using statistics from Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, only full-time workers in Iceland put in longer hours than the Swiss, who ranked second, the office said.
France and Finland were at the bottom of the list. The FSO said that there is a trend for less work and more holidays in Switzerland.
"In 2017, hours worked totaled 7.861 billion," down 0.4 percent from the preceding years, said the FSO.
The FSO said that "between 2012 and 2017, the actual weekly hours worked by full-time employees declined by 15 minutes on average and stood at 41 hours and 7 minutes, whereas the number of weeks of annual holiday continued its gradual increase to 5.14 weeks."
The office said the average working week in Switzerland last year was 15 minutes less than in 2012 and over the same period, the average amount of holiday for these employees rose from 5.05 weeks.
Broken down into sectors, full-time farmers and foresters worked the most in Switzerland, logging 45 hours and 35 minutes a week.
They were followed by those in the hospitality industry (42 hours and 30 minutes) and bankers and insurers (41 hours and 44 minutes).
