Band 8+: The charts below show the figure for work hours per week in the industrial sector in four European countries in 2002. Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main characteristics, and compare with the corresponding ones.

The given bar charts compare the distribution of weekly working hours in the industrial sector across four European countries in 2002.

Overall, the largest proportion of industrial employees in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden worked between 36 and 40 hours per week, whereas in France the most common working week was slightly shorter, at 31-35 hours. Another notable feature is that relatively few employees worked more than 40 hours in any country, with Sweden being the only exception to record a substantial proportion.

At the lower end of the scale, around 10% of industrial workers in both the UK and Denmark worked between 1 and 30 hours per week, while the corresponding figure for France was slightly higher, at approximately 15%. Sweden, by contrast, had the highest proportion in this category, at about 20%. In all four countries, the percentage of workers increased as weekly working hours rose from 31-35 to 36-40 hours before declining steadily in the longer-hour categories. Sweden recorded the highest proportion of employees working 36-40 hours, with approximately 80% falling into this group.

Turning to the longer working weeks, only a relatively small share of employees worked between 41 and over 50 hours in all four countries. In fact, no country exceeded 20% in any of these categories apart from Sweden, where roughly one quarter of industrial workers were employed for 41-45 hours per week.

In summary, the majority of industrial employees in all four countries worked between 31 and 40 hours per week, although the UK differed slightly, with only around 10% of workers falling into the 31-35-hour category. It was also the only country in which approximately one fifth of employees worked 50 hours or more each week.