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Calculator, how many time in weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds has passed since a certain date. Preset are the beginning of the current day and the current date, these can be changed at will. The time past since then and the amount in weeks, in days, in hours, in minutes and in seconds will be calculated.

Joe is the creator of Inch Calculator and has over 20 years of experience in engineering and construction. He holds several degrees and certifications.Laura started her career in Finance a decade ago and provides strategic financial management consulting. She has an MBA in Finance and a Bachelor’s in Economics. Since 30 minutes is equal to 0.5 hours, you can change the end time to 17.5 as a decimal. The start time has no minutes to divide, so it’s already in decimal form – 9:00 becomes 9.0. Overall, it’s important to understand how to calculate your total hours worked in order to track projects and ensure that you are paid accurately. It’s also important to understand what items need to be tracked on a time sheet, for example, paid or unpaid breaks.

For a full-time job, there are 40 hours in a typical work week. However, each employer varies, and some employers offer full-time jobs that are 32 hours per week, for example.The final step in calculating hours is to account for any unpaid breaks in the day. Add up all of the break time in minutes, then divide the total minutes by 60 to convert them to hours as a decimal.

The first step in calculating hours is to convert the start and end times to 24-hour time, sometimes called military time. To do this, morning hours will stay the same, and you will add 12 if the time is in the afternoon (1:00 pm to 11:59 pm).

The chart below shows the hours in a typical workday for various start and end times. This chart does not account for unpaid breaks during these times.Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), there is no legal definition for what is considered full-time or part-time employment. Each employer makes the determination on what they consider to be part-time or full-time employment. With that said, most employers consider 30 hours or greater per week to be full-time.

If a full-time employee works five days per week for the entire year, that totals 2,080 hours. Most employers consider 2,080 to be the standard number of work hours per year. If you need to submit a time card or track time for a job or project, then you probably need to track the hours you worked. Follow a few simple steps to find the total time you worked. The canonical hours were introduced to early Christianity from Second Temple Judaism. By AD 60, the Didache recommends disciples to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day; this practice found its way into the canonical hours as well. By the second and third centuries, such Church Fathers as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian wrote of the practice of Morning and Evening Prayer, and of the prayers at the third, sixth and ninth hours. In the early church, during the night before every feast, a vigil was kept. The word “Vigils”, at first applied to the Night Office, comes from a Latin source, namely the Vigiliae or nocturnal watches or guards of the soldiers. The night from six o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning was divided into four watches or vigils of three hours each, the first, the second, the third, and the fourth vigil. Like Old English tīd and stund, hṓrā was originally a vaguer word for any span of time, including seasons and years. Its Proto-Indo-European root has been reconstructed as *yeh₁- (“year, summer”), making hour distantly cognate with year. The later division of the day into 12 hours was accomplished by sundials marked with ten equal divisions. The morning and evening periods when the sundials failed to note time were observed as the first and last hours.

The ancient Greeks kept time differently from the way we do today. Instead of dividing the time between one midnight and the next into 24 equal hours, they divided the time from sunrise to sunset into 12 “seasonal hours” (their actual duration depending on season), and the time from sunset to the next sunrise again in 12 “seasonal hours”. Initially, only the day was divided into 12 seasonal hours and the night into three or four night watches.The Horae were originally personifications of seasonal aspects of nature, not of the time of day. The list of twelve Horae representing the twelve hours of the day is recorded only in Late Antiquity, by Nonnus. The first and twelfth of the Horae were added to the original set of ten:

The Egyptian hours were closely connected both with the priesthood of the gods and with their divine services. By the New Kingdom, each hour was conceived as a specific region of the sky or underworld through which Ra’s solar barge travelled. Protective deities were assigned to each and were used as the names of the hours. As the protectors and resurrectors of the sun, the goddesses of the night hours were considered to hold power over all lifespans and thus became part of Egyptian funerary rituals. Two fire-spitting cobras were said to guard the gates of each hour of the underworld, and Wadjet and the rearing cobra (uraeus) were also sometimes referenced as wnwt from their role protecting the dead through these gates. The Egyptian word for astronomer, used as a synonym for priest, was wnwty, “one of the wnwt”, as it were “one of the hours”. The earliest forms of wnwt include one or three stars, with the later solar hours including the determinative hieroglyph for “sun”.Sunrise marked the beginning of the first hour, the middle of the day was at the end of the sixth hour and sunset at the end of the twelfth hour. This meant that the duration of hours varied with the season. In the Northern hemisphere, particularly in the more northerly latitudes, summer daytime hours were longer than winter daytime hours, each being one twelfth of the time between sunrise and sunset. These variable-length hours were variously known as temporal, unequal, or seasonal hours and were in use until the appearance of the mechanical clock, which furthered the adoption of equal length hours.

Its replacement by the more practical division into twice twelve (equinoctial) hours (also called small clock or civic hours) began as early as the 16th century.

The Vedas and Puranas employed units of time based on the sidereal day (nakṣatra ahorātra). This was variously divided into 30 muhūrta-s of 48 minutes each or 60 dandas or nadī-s of 24 minutes each. The solar day was later similarly divided into 60 ghaṭikás of about the same duration, each divided in turn into 60 vinadis. The Sinhalese followed a similar system but called their sixtieth of a day a peya.

The Islamic day begins at sunset. The first prayer of the day (maghrib) is to be performed between just after sunset and the end of twilight. Until 1968 Saudi Arabia used the system of counting 24 equal hours with the first hour starting at sunset.In medieval Europe, the Roman hours continued to be marked on sundials but the more important units of time were the canonical hours of the Orthodox and Catholic Church. During daylight, these followed the pattern set by the three-hour bells of the Roman markets, which were succeeded by the bells of local churches. They rang prime at about 6 am, terce at about 9 am, sext at noon, nones at about 3 pm, and vespers at either 6 pm or sunset. Matins and lauds precede these irregularly in the morning hours; compline follows them irregularly before sleep; and the midnight office follows that. Vatican II ordered their reformation for the Catholic Church in 1963, though they continue to be observed in the Orthodox churches.

In Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, the traditional system of noting hours is the six-hour clock. This reckons each of a day’s 24 hours apart from noon as part of a fourth of the day. The first hour of the first half of daytime was 7 am; 1 pm the first hour of the latter half of daytime; 7 pm the first hour of the first half of nighttime; and 1 am the first hour of the latter half of nighttime. This system existed in the Ayutthaya Kingdom, deriving its current phrasing from the practice of publicly announcing the daytime hours with a gong and the nighttime hours with a drum. It was abolished in Laos and Cambodia during their French occupation and is uncommon there now. The Thai system remains in informal use in the form codified in 1901 by King Chulalongkorn. It displaced tide tīd, ‘time’ and stound stund, span of time. The Anglo-Norman term was a borrowing of Old French ure, a variant of ore, which derived from Latin hōra and Greek hṓrā (ὥρα). In ancient and medieval cultures, the counting of hours generally started with sunrise. Before the widespread use of artificial light, societies were more concerned with the division between night and day, and daily routines often began when light was sufficient.

Ancient China divided its day into 100 “marks” (Chinese: 刻, oc *kʰək, p kè) running from midnight to midnight. The system is said to have been used since remote antiquity, credited to the legendary Yellow Emperor, but is first attested in Han-era water clocks and in the 2nd-century history of that dynasty. It was measured with sundials and water clocks. Into the Eastern Han, the Chinese measured their day schematically, adding the 20-ke difference between the solstices evenly throughout the year, one every nine days. During the night, time was more commonly reckoned during the night by the “watches” (Chinese: 更, oc *kæŋ, p gēng) of the guard, which were reckoned as a fifth of the time from sunset to sunrise.This manner of counting hours had the advantage that everyone could easily know how much time they had to finish their day’s work without artificial light. It was already widely used in Italy by the 14th century and lasted until the mid-18th century; it was officially abolished in 1755, or in some regions customary until the mid-19th century.When mechanical clocks began to be used to show hours of daylight or nighttime, their period needed to be changed every morning and evening (for example, by changing the length of their pendula). The use of 24 hours for the entire day meant hours varied much less and the clocks needed to be adjusted only a few times a month.

This is also the system used in Jewish law and frequently called “Talmudic hour” (Sha’a Zemanit) in a variety of texts. The Talmudic hour is one twelfth of time elapsed from sunrise to sunset, day hours therefore being longer than night hours in the summer; in winter they reverse.

The minor irregularities of the apparent solar day were smoothed by measuring time using the mean solar day, using the Sun’s movement along the celestial equator rather than along the ecliptic. The irregularities of this time system were so minor that most clocks reckoning such hours did not need adjustment. However, scientific measurements eventually became precise enough to note the effect of tidal deceleration of the Earth by the Moon, which gradually lengthens the Earth’s days.”Babylonian hours” divide the day and night into 24 equal hours, reckoned from the time of sunrise. They are so named from the false belief of ancient authors that the Babylonians divided the day into 24 parts, beginning at sunrise. In fact, they divided the day into 12 parts (called kaspu or “double hours”) or into 60 equal parts.An advantage of the evening counting start was that on a corresponding clock the difference to 24 was easy to see and so one knew how many hours could still be worked in Daylight.

The system of Italian hours can be seen on a number of clocks in Europe, where the dial is numbered from 1 to 24 in either Roman or Arabic numerals. The St Mark’s Clock in Venice, and the Orloj in Prague are famous examples. It was also used in Poland, Silesia, and Bohemia until the 17th century.Fifteen and thirty minutes past the hour is expressed as “a quarter past” or “after” and “half past”, respectively, from their fraction of the hour. Fifteen minutes before the hour may be expressed as “a quarter to”, “of”, “till”, or “before” the hour. (9:45 may be read “nine forty-five” or “a quarter till ten”.)The 12 shi supposedly began to be divided into 24 hours under the Tang, although they are first attested in the Ming-era Book of Yuan. In that work, the hours were known by the same earthly branches as the shi, with the first half noted as its “starting” and the second as “completed” or “proper” shi. In modern China, these are instead simply numbered and described as “little shi”. The modern ke is now used to count quarter-hours, rather than a separate unit.

In the modern metric system, hours are an accepted unit of time defined as 3,600 atomic seconds. However, on rare occasions an hour may incorporate a positive or negative leap second, effectively making it appear to last 3,599 or 3,601 seconds, in order to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of UT1, the latter of which is based on measurements of the mean solar day.Hours on a 24-hour clock (“military time”) are expressed as “hundred” or “hundred hours”. (1000 is read “ten hundred” or “ten hundred hours”; 10 pm would be “twenty-two hundred”.)

In the modern 12-hour clock, counting the hours starts at midnight and restarts at noon. Hours are numbered 12, 1, 2, …, 11. Solar noon is always close to 12 noon (ignoring artificial adjustments due to time zones and daylight saving time), differing according to the equation of time by as much as fifteen minutes either way. At the equinoxes sunrise is around 6 a.m. (Latin: ante meridiem, before noon), and sunset around 6 p.m. (Latin: post meridiem, after noon).

Medieval astronomers such as al-Biruni and Sacrobosco, divided the hour into 60 minutes, each of 60 seconds; this derives from Babylonian astronomy, where the corresponding terms denoted the time required for the Sun’s apparent motion through the ecliptic to describe one minute or second of arc, respectively. In present terms, the Babylonian degree of time was thus four minutes long, the “minute” of time was thus four seconds long and the “second” 1/15 of a second.)

In so-called “Italian time”, “Italian hours”, or “old Czech time”, the first hour started with the sunset Angelus bell (or at the end of dusk, i.e., half an hour after sunset, depending on local custom and geographical latitude). The hours were numbered from 1 to 24. For example, in Lugano, the sun rose in December during the 14th hour and noon was during the 19th hour; in June the sun rose during the 7th hour and noon was in the 15th hour. Sunset was always at the end of the 24th hour. The clocks in church towers struck only from 1 to 12, thus only during night or early morning hours. As with the Egyptian night and daytime hours, the division of the day into twelve shi has been credited to the example set by the rough number of lunar cycles in a solar year, although the 12-year Jovian orbital cycle was more important to traditional Chinese and Babylonian reckoning of the zodiac. In the modern 24-hour clock, counting the hours starts at midnight, and hours are numbered from 0 to 23. Solar noon is always close to 12:00, again differing according to the equation of time. At the equinoxes sunrise is around 06:00, and sunset around 18:00.Many different ways of counting the hours have been used. Because sunrise, sunset, and, to a lesser extent, noon, are the conspicuous points in the day, starting to count at these times was, for most people in most early societies, much easier than starting at midnight. However, with accurate clocks and modern astronomical equipment (and the telegraph or similar means to transfer a time signal in a split-second), this issue is much less relevant.

On 26 November 2012, the Labour Department of the HKSAR released the “Report of the policy study on standard working hours”. The report covers three major areas, including: (1) the regimes and experience of other places in regulating working hours, (2) latest working time situations of employees in different sectors, and (3) estimation of the possible impact of introducing standard working hour in Hong Kong. Under the selected parameters, from most loosen to most stringent, the estimated increase in labour cost vary from 1.1 billion to 55 billion HKD, and affect 957,100 (36.7% of total employees) to 2,378,900 (91.1% of total) employees.In terms of manpower, our present defense targets will require an increase of nearly one million men and women in the armed forces within a few months, and probably not less than four million more in defense production by the end of the year. This means that an additional 8 percent of our labor force, and possibly much more, will be required by direct defense needs by the end of the year. These manpower needs will call both for increasing our labor force by reducing unemployment and drawing in women and older workers, and for lengthening hours of work in essential industries.

Generally, workers are paid time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times the worker’s base wage, for each hour of work past forty. California also applies this rule to work in excess of eight hours per day, but exemptions and exceptions significantly limit the applicability of this law. Articles 161 to 167 of the Substantive Work Code in Colombia provide for a maximum of 48 hours of work a week. Also, the law notes that workdays should be divided into 2 sections to allow a break, usually given as the meal time which is not counted as work. Typically, there is a 2-hours break for lunch that starts from 12:00 through 13:00. In June 2021, the Colombian Congress approved a bill for the reduction of the work-week, from 48 to 42 hours, which will be implemented in several stages, from 2023 to 2026. Technology has also continued to improve worker productivity, permitting standards of living to rise as hours decline. In developed economies, as the time needed to manufacture goods has declined, more working hours have become available to provide services, resulting in a shift of much of the workforce between sectors.

Lok-sang Ho, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies of Lingnan University, pointed out that “as different employees perform various jobs and under different degrees of pressures, it may not be appropriate to establish standard working hours in Hong Kong”; and he proposed a 50-hour maximum work week to protect workers’ health.Work hours in Japan are decreasing, but many Japanese still work long hours. Recently, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) issued a draft report recommending major changes to the regulations that govern working hours. The centerpiece of the proposal is an exemption from overtime pay for white-collar workers. Japan has enacted an 8-hour work day and 40-hour work week (44 hours in specified workplaces). The overtime limits are: 15 hours a week, 27 hours over two weeks, 43 hours over four weeks, 45 hours a month, 81 hours over two months and 120 hours over three months; however, some workers get around these restrictions by working several hours a day without ‘clocking in’ whether physically or metaphorically. The overtime allowance should not be lower than 125% and not more than 150% of the normal hourly rate. Workaholism in Japan is considered a serious social problem leading to early death, a phenomenon dubbed karōshi, meaning death from overwork.

Lee Shu-Kam, Associate Professor of the Department of Economics and Finance of HKSYU, believes that standard working hours cannot deliver “work–life balance”. He referenced the research to the US by the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999 and pointed out that in the industries and regions in which the wage elasticity is low, the effects of standard working hours on lowering actual working time and increasing wages is limited: for regions where the labor supply is inadequate, standard working hours can protect employees’ benefits yet cause unemployment; but for regions (such as Japan) where the problem does not exist, standard working hours would only lead to unemployment. In addition, he said the effect of standard working hours is similar to that of (for example) giving overtime pay, making employees to favor overtime work more. In this sense, introducing standard working hours does not match its principle: to shorten work time and to increase the recreation time of employees. He believed that the key point is to help employees to achieve work–life balance and to get a win-win situation of employers and employees.The Labour Party believed regulating working hours could help achieve a work–life balance. It suggests an 8-hour work day, a 44-hour standard work week, a 60-hour maximum work week and an overtime pay of 1.5 times the usual pay.

Under most circumstances, wage earners and lower-level employees may be legally required by an employer to work more than forty hours in a week; however, they are paid extra for the additional work. Many salaried workers and commission-paid sales staff are not covered by overtime laws. These are generally called “exempt” positions, because they are exempt from federal and state laws that mandate extra pay for extra time worked. The rules are complex, but generally exempt workers are executives, professionals, or sales staff. For example, school teachers are not paid extra for working extra hours. Business owners and independent contractors are considered self-employed, and none of these laws apply to them.The Chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Chow Chung-kong believes that it is so difficult to implement standard working hours that apply “across-the-board”, specifically, to accountants and barristers. In addition, he believes that standard working hours may decrease individual employees’ working hours and would not increase their actual income. It may also lead to an increase of number of part-timers in the labor market.

The New Economics Foundation has recommended moving to a 21-hour standard work week to address problems with unemployment, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, overworking, family care, and the general lack of free time. Actual work week lengths have been falling in the developed world.The vast majority of full-time employees in Australia work additional overtime hours. A 2015 survey found that of Australia’s 7.7 million full-time workers, 5 million put in more than 40 hours a week, including 1.4 million who worked more than 50 hours a week and 270,000 who put in more than 70 hours.

China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays. However, this rule has never been truly enforced, and unpaid or underpaid overtime working is common practice in China.By 1946, the United States government had inaugurated the 40-hour work week for all federal employees. Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion that would let it “siphon off” a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union. In his 1951 Annual Message to the Congress, President Truman stated:

In 2009, a rapid increase in the number of working hours was reported in a study by The Australia Institute. The study found the average Australian worked 1855 hours per year at work. According to Clive Hamilton of The Australia Institute, this surpasses even Japan. The Australia Institute believes that Australians work the highest number of hours in the developed world.

Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, the Secretary for Labour and Welfare Bureau, said the Executive Council has already received the government report on working hours in June, and the Labour Advisory Board and the LegCo’s Manpower Panel will receive the report in late November and December respectively. On 26 November 2012, the Labour Department released the report, and the report covered the regimes and experience of practicing standard working hours in selected regions, current work hour situations in different industries, and the impact assessment of standard working hours. Also, Matthew Cheung mentioned that the government will form a select committee by first quarter of 2013, which will include government officials, representative of labor unions and employers’ associations, academics and community leaders, to investigate the related issues. He also said that it would “perhaps be unrealistic” to put forward a bill for standard working hours in the next one to two years.Elizabeth Quat of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), believed that standard working hours were a labor policy and was not related to family-friendly policies. The Vice President of Young DAB, Wai-hung Chan, stated that standard working hours would bring limitations to small and medium enterprises. He thought that the government should discuss the topic with the public more before legislating standard working hours.

South Korea has the fastest shortening working time in the OECD, which is the result of the government’s proactive move to lower working hours at all levels and to increase leisure and relaxation time, which introduced the mandatory forty-hour, five-day working week in 2004 for companies with over 1,000 employees. Beyond regular working hours, it is legal to demand up to 12 hours of overtime during the week, plus another 16 hours on weekends. The 40-hour workweek expanded to companies with 300 employees or more in 2005, 100 employees or more in 2006, 50 or more in 2007, 20 or more in 2008 and a full inclusion to all workers nationwide in July 2011. The government has continuously increased public holidays to 16 days in 2013, more than the 10 days of the United States and double that of the United Kingdom’s 8 days. Despite those efforts, South Korea’s work hours are still relatively long, with an average 1,967 hours per year in 2019.

France experimented in 2000 with a sharp cut of legal or statutory working time of the employees in the private and public sector from 39 hours a week to 35 hours a week, with the stated goal to fight against rampant unemployment at that time. The Law 2000–37 on working time reduction is also referred to as the Aubry Law, according to the name of the Labor Minister at that time. Employees may (and do) work more than 35 hours a week, yet in this case firms must pay them overtime bonuses. If the bonus is determined through collective negotiations, it cannot be lower than 10%. If no agreement on working time is signed, the legal bonus must be of 25% for the first 8 hours, then goes up to 50% for the rest. Including overtime, the maximum working time cannot exceed 48 hours per week, and should not exceed 44 hours per week over 12 weeks in a row. In France the labor law also regulates the minimum working hours: part-time jobs should not allow for less than 24 hours per week without a branch collective agreement. These agreements can allow for less, under tight conditions. According to the official statistics (DARES), after the introduction of the law on working time reduction, actual hours per week performed by full-time employed, fell from 39.6 hours in 1999, to a trough of 37.7 hours in 2002, then gradually went back to 39.1 hours in 2005. In 2016 working hours were of 39.1.Workweek policies are not uniform in the U.S. Many compensation arrangements are legal, and three of the most common are wage, commission, and salary payment schemes. Wage earners are compensated on a per-hour basis, whereas salaried workers are compensated on a per-week or per-job basis, and commission workers get paid according to how much they produce or sell. The main labor law in Spain, the Workers’ Statute Act, limits the amount of working time that an employee is obliged to perform. In the Article 34 of this law, a maximum of 9 hours per day and 40 hours per week are established. A majority of adults emphasize the lack of a siesta during the typical work week. Only one in ten Spaniards take a mid-day nap, a percentage less than other European nations.

Working hours are regulated by law. Mandatory logging of employee working time has been in place since 2019 in an attempt by legislators to eliminate unpaid overtime and push for more transparency of actual working hours. Non-regulated pauses during the workday for coffee or smoking are not permitted to be documented as working time, according to a ruling by The Spanish National Court in February 2020.The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions suggested a standard 44-hour work week with overtime pay of 1.5 times the usual pay. It believes the regulation of standard working hour can prevent the employers to force employees to work (overtime) without pay.Economic growth in monetary terms tends to be concentrated in health care, education, government, criminal justice, corrections, and other activities rather than those that contribute directly to the production of material goods.The 996 working hour system, as it is known, is where employees work from 09:00 to 21:00, six days a week, excluding two hours of lunch & nap during the noon and one hour of supper in the evening. Alibaba founder Jack (Yun) Ma, and JD.Com founder Richard (Qiangdong) Liu both praise the 996 schedule, saying such a schedule has helped Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent grow to become what they are today.

Many professional workers put in longer hours than the forty-hour standard. In professional industries like investment banking and large law firms, a forty-hour workweek is considered inadequate and may result in job loss or failure to be promoted. Medical residents in the United States routinely work long hours as part of their training.In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours.Generally, business sector agrees that it is important to achieve work–life balance, but does not support a legislation to regulate working hours limit. They believe “standard working hours” is not the best way to achieve work–life balance and the root cause of the long working hours in Hong Kong is due to insufficient labor supply. The managing director of Century Environmental Services Group, Catherine Yan, said “Employees may want to work more to obtain a higher salary due to financial reasons. If standard working hour legislation is passed, employers will need to pay a higher salary to employees, and hence the employers may choose to segment work tasks to employer more part time employees instead of providing overtime pay to employees.” She thinks this will lead to a situation that the employees may need to find two part-time jobs to earn their living, making them wasting more time on transportation from one job to another.

However, one of the interesting aspects of the Spanish work day and labor is the traditional presence of a break around lunchtime. It is sometimes mistakenly thought to be due to siesta, but in fact was due to workers returning to their families for the main midday meal. That break, typically of 1 or 2 hours, has been kept in the working culture because in the post-civil-war period most workers had two jobs to be able to sustain their families. Following this tradition, in small and medium-sized cities, restaurants and businesses shut down during this time period of 2-5 for retail and 4-8 for restaurants. Many office jobs only allow one hour or even a half hour breaks to eat the meal in office building restaurants or designated lunch rooms.Employees typically receive either 12 or 14 payments per year, with approximately 21 days of vacation. According to Spanish law, Spain holds what is known as the Convenios-Colectivos, which stipulates that different regulations and laws regarding employee work week and wage apply based on the type of job. Overall they rank as the 13th highest in regard to international GDP growth.

Since the 1960s, the consensus among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agrarian societies; for instance, one camp of !Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day. Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours.

On 17–18 October 2012, the Legislative Council members in Hong Kong debated on the motion “legislation for the regulation of working hours”. Cheung Kwok-che proposed the motion “That is the Council urges the Government to introduce a bill on the regulation of working hours within this legislative session, the contents of which must include the number of standard weekly hours and overtime pay”. As the motion was not passed by both functional constituencies and geographical constituencies, it was negatived.

Many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays, and a maximum number of working hours per week. Working time may vary from person to person, often depending on economic conditions, location, culture, lifestyle choice, and the profitability of the individual’s livelihood. For example, someone who is supporting children and paying a large mortgage might need to work more hours to meet basic costs of living than someone of the same earning power with lower housing costs. In developed countries like the United Kingdom, some workers are part-time because they are unable to find full-time work, but many choose reduced work hours to care for children or other family; some choose it simply to increase leisure time.Over the 20th century, work hours shortened by almost half, partly due to rising wages brought about by renewed economic growth and competition for skilled workers, with a supporting role from trade unions, collective bargaining, and progressive legislation. The workweek, in most of the industrialized world, dropped steadily, to about 40 hours after World War II. The limitation of working hours is also proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and European Social Charter. The decline continued at a faster pace in Europe: for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000. In 1995, China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays (though this is not widely practiced). Working hours in industrializing economies like South Korea, though still much higher than the leading industrial countries, are also declining steadily. Hong Kong has no legislation regarding maximum and normal working hours. The average weekly working hours of full-time employees in Hong Kong is 49 hours. According to the Price and Earnings Report 2012 conducted by UBS, while the global and regional average were 1,915 and 2,154 hours per year respectively, the average working hours in Hong Kong is 2,296 hours per year, which ranked the fifth longest yearly working hours among 72 countries under study. In addition, from the survey conducted by the Public Opinion Study Group of the University of Hong Kong, 79% of the respondents agree that the problem of overtime work in Hong Kong is “severe”, and 65% of the respondents support the legislation on the maximum working hours. In Hong Kong, 70% of surveyed do not receive any overtime remuneration. These show that people in Hong Kong concerns the working time issues. As Hong Kong implemented the minimum wage law in May 2011, the Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, of the Special Administrative Region pledged that the government will standardize working hours in Hong Kong. Brazil has a 44-hour work week, normally 8 hours per day and 4 hours on Saturday or 8.8 hours per day. Jobs with no meal breaks or on-duty meal breaks are 6 hours per day. Public servants work 40 hours per week.In 2018, Taiwan had the world’s 4th longest work hour and 2nd in Asia, with the average number of work hours hit 2,033 hours. There had been reduction in the work hours by 122 from 2008 to 2018.

As President Truman’s 1951 message had predicted, the share of working women rose from 30 percent of the labor force in 1950 to 47 percent by 2000 – growing at a particularly rapid rate during the 1970s. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued May 2002, “In 1950, the overall participation rate of women was 34 percent. … The rate rose to 38 percent in 1960, 43 percent in 1970, 52 percent in 1980, and 58 percent in 1990 and reached 60 percent by 2000. The overall labor force participation rate of women is projected to attain its highest level in 2010, at 62 percent.” The inclusion of women in the work force can be seen as symbolic of social progress as well as of increasing American productivity and hours worked.In some states, firms are required to pay double-time, or twice the base rate, for each hour of work past 60, or each hour of work past 12 in one day in California, also subject to numerous exemptions and exceptions. This provides an incentive for companies to limit working time, but makes these additional hours more desirable for the worker. It is not uncommon for overtime hours to be accepted voluntarily by wage-earning workers. Unions often treat overtime as a desirable commodity when negotiating how these opportunities shall be partitioned among union members.

Employer representative in the Labour Advisory Board, Stanley Lau, said that standard working hours will completely alter the business environment of Hong Kong, affect small and medium enterprise and weaken competitiveness of businesses. He believes that the government can encourage employers to pay overtime salary, and there is no need to regulate standard working hours.Hong Kong Catholic Commission For Labour Affairs urges the government to legislate the standard working hours in Hong Kong, and suggests a 44 hours standard, 54 hours maximum working hours in a week. The organization thinks that long working time adversely affects the family and social life and health of employees; it also indicates that the current Employment Ordinance does not regulate overtime pays, working time limits nor rest day pays, which can protect employees rights.

The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday to Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. Sunday is set aside in the western world because it is the Christian sabbath.Most countries in the developed world have seen average hours worked decrease significantly. For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week. Today the average hours worked in the U.S. is around 33, with the average man employed full-time for 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time for 7.9 hours per work day. The front runners for lowest average weekly work hours are the Netherlands with 27 hours, and France with 30 hours. In a 2011 report of 26 OECD countries, Germany had the lowest average working hours per week at 25.6 hours.

Standard working hours (or normal working hours) refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. The employer pays higher rates for overtime hours as required in the law. Standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 40 to 44 hours per week (but not everywhere: from 35 hours per week in France to up to 105 hours per week in North Korean labor camps) and the additional overtime payments are around 25% to 50% above the normal hourly payments. Maximum working hours refers to the maximum working hours of an employee. The employee cannot work more than the level specified in the maximum working hours law.

According to a study of the OECD Better Life Index, 4% of Spanish workers work more than 50 hours per week, compared to an average of 11% of workers in OECD countries. Francis Lui, Head and Professor of the Department of Economics of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believed that standard working hours may not lower work time but increase unemployment. He used Japan as an example to illustrate that the implementation of standard working hours lowered productivity per head and demotivated the economy. He also said that even if the standard working hours can shorten employees’ weekly working hours, they may need to work for more years to earn sufficient amount of money for retirement, i.e. delay their retirement age. The total working time over the course of a lifetime may not change. Between 1950 and 2007 official price inflation was measured to 861 percent. President Truman, in his 1951 message to Congress, predicted correctly that his military buildup “will cause intense and mounting inflationary pressures.” Using the data provided by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. According to Rauch, “if productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week.”

The Democratic Party suggested a 44-hour standard work week and compulsory overtime pay to help achieve the balance between work, rest and entertainment of people in Hong Kong.

Yip Siu-fai, Professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration of HKU, has noted that professions such as nursing and accountancy have long working hours and that this may affect people’s social life. He believes that standard working hours could help to give Hong Kong more family-friendly workplaces and to increase fertility rates. Randy Chiu, Professor of the Department of Management of HKBU, has said that introducing standard working hours could avoid excessively long working hours of employees. He also said that nowadays Hong Kong attains almost full employment, has a high rental price and severe inflation, recently implemented minimum wage, and is affected by a gloomy global economy; he also mentioned that comprehensive considerations on macroeconomic situations are needed, and emphasized that it is perhaps inappropriate to adopt working-time regulation as exemplified in other countries to Hong Kong.

Singapore has an 8-hour normal work day (9 hours including lunchtime), a 45-hour normal working week, and a maximum 48-hour work week. If the employee works no more than five days a week, the employee’s normal working day is 9 hours and the working week is 44 hours. Also, if the number of hours worked by the worker is less than 44 hours every alternate week, the 44-hour weekly limit may be exceeded in the other week. However, this is subject to the pre-specification in the service contract, and the maximum should not exceed 48 hours per week or 88 hours in any consecutive two week period. In addition, a shift worker can work up to 12 hours a day, provided that the average working hours per week do not exceed 44 over a consecutive three-week period. The overtime allowance per overtime hour must not be less than 1.5 times the employee’s hourly basic rates.

Working (laboring) time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week.Poon Siu-ping of Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon Labour Unions thought that it is possible to set work hour limit for all industries; and the regulation on working hours can ensure the overtime payment by employers to employees, and protect employees’ health. Next, click the blue ‘Calculate Difference in Hours’ button. We’ll then do the math on the time-span between the two times you give us, assuming they both occurred in less than 24 hours (that is, 23 hours and 59 minutes is the maximum span). Below is an hours calculator. Use the easy-to-enter inputs and enter a starting time and an ending time, then hit the ‘Calculate’ button. We’ll add up the number of hours (up to 23 hours and 59 minutes maximum).The calculator is also great to plan and prepare with activities later in the day. Just enter the current time and when the event starts and we’ll tell you how long you have left to get ready. Hopefully the tool is useful to show the time duration when entering a start and end time. We look forward to see how you use the hours calculator – enjoy! This tool is most often used to calculate the length of a shift. Especially when a shift is overnight, it can be tricky to calculate the number of hours total. The hours between calculator clears up that trickiness and makes it easy to compute time-spans that cross noon and midnight.A 12-hour clock uses the numbers 1-12. Depending on the clock being used, most analog clocks or watches may not include an indication of whether the time is in the morning or evening. On digital clocks and watches, “AM” stands for ante meridiem, meaning “before midday,” while “PM” stands for post meridiem, or “after noon.” By convention, 12 AM denotes midnight, while 12 PM denotes noon. Using the terms “12 midnight” and “12 noon” can remove ambiguity in cases where a person may not be accustomed to conventions. A 24-hour clock typically uses the numbers 0-23, where 00:00 indicates midnight, and a day runs from midnight to midnight over the course of 24 hours. This time format is an international standard, and is often used to avoid the ambiguity resulting from the use of a 12-hour clock. The hours from 0-11 denote what would be the AM hours on a 12-hour clock, while hours 12-23 denote the PM hours of a 12-hour clock. In certain countries, 24-hour time is referred to as military time, since this is the time format used by militaries (and other entities) around the world, where unambiguous time measurement is particularly important. An hour is most commonly defined as a period of time equal to 60 minutes, where a minute is equal to 60 seconds, and a second has a rigorous scientific definition. There are also 24 hours in a day. Most people read time using either a 12-hour clock or a 24-hour clock.Need to just type the hours and minutes, without the full sentence? No problem! The snippet below behaves exactly like the snippet above, but the output is just a number – the hours and minutes. Give it a try!

This simple online utility tool makes it easy to calculate the difference in hours and minutes between two given times. To calculate the hours and minutes contained in a time period you need to know its beginning and end time.