Milton Keynes is the hardest working city in the UK with average earnings at £31.5K a year, according to a report by a UK payment specialist.
Merchant Machine used ONS ASHE data to study how many hours people in each city in the UK work per week.
The hours worked in each city ranged from 37.4h per week (Milton Keynes) down to 35h per week (Edinburgh, Southampton, Glasgow and Liverpool). Over a year, this means workers in Milton Keynes are working on average 125 hours more per week than employees in the latter cities.
London came in low in the list with the median hours worked per week being 36.8 hours per week– considerably low for the city that is often considered to be the employment hub of the UK.
- Milton Keynes – 37.4 hours per week
- Stoke-on-Trent– 37.4hours per week
- Wakefield– 37.1 hours per week
- Birmingham– 37 hours per week
- Leeds– 37 hours per week
- Newcastle upon Tyne– 37 hours per week
- Wolverhampton– 37 hours per week
- Sunderland– 37 hours per week
- Hull– 37 hours per week
- Walsall– 37 hours per week
Ian Wright at MerchantMachine comments: “How much people get paid is covered and spoken about widely but hours worked is less common. We wanted to shed light on just how much the UK is really working per week and so undertook this research into the total hours worked (basic hours + paid overtime hours). This reveals that though many of the median hours worked are within the normal range, some of the upper-limits show that much of the UK may be overworking.”
The study also found that the Construction industry was named the hardest working industry in the UK with the average worker clocking a total of 40 hours per week. Upper limits for this industry were also high with some working up to 49 hours.
The fourth hardest working industry, Agriculture, had the highest upper-limit of hours worked of all industries with some employees clocking up to 53.6 hours per week. That is 13.6 hours more per week than the average full-time week.
