Employees in Mumbai Work the Longest Hours in the World, Says Study

An average employee in Mumbai works 3,315 hours a year against an average of 1,987 hours in the world, according to findings of the Swiss investment services firm, UBS, BloombergQuint reported. Mumbai residents work for the longest hours among 77 major cities in the world, the report says.

The number of working hours in Mumbai is twice that in cities like Rome (1,581 hours) or Paris (1,662 hours). New Delhi is fourth on the list, with an average employee putting in 2,511.4 hours a year.

In its Price and Earnings 2018 report, UBS assessed 77 cities on a number of parameters, such as average annual working hours, price levels, earning levels and purchasing power in these cities. It discovered that employees in Mumbai, Hanoi, Mexico City, New Delhi and Bogota worked the most number of hours in a year. Employees in Helsinki, Moscow, Copenhagen, Paris, Rome and Lagos worked the fewest hours.

From January to April of this year, UBS collected over 75,000 data points from these 77 cities.

Employees at Mumbai also took the least amount of vacation days, numbering at 10 days. Joining the club of least amount of vacation days are Los Angeles, Beijing, Hanoi and Lagos. The maximum amount of vacation days were taken by employees in Moscow, St Petersburg, Barcelona, Doha and Riyadh, where more than 30 vacation days were taken every year.

In terms of purchasing power, an employee in Mumbai would have to work 900 hours to be able to afford an iPhone X, while in Delhi the corresponding number of hours stood at 800. Employees in Cairo have to work longer —  1,000 hours — while those in Zurich only need to work 38 hours to be able to afford an iPhone X. Workers in Geneva, Los Angeles, Miami and Nicosia needed to put in less than 100 hours of work for the latest Apple product. The report compared the hours it would take to afford an iPhone or an iPad as these devices featured top on the list of products that millennials wanted to buy.

When it comes to hourly earnings, Geneva, Zurich and Luxemborg top the list. Mumbai does poorly, coming in second last at number 76. The city is ahead of Cairo but behind Nairobi and Laos, which rank higher on the average earnings table.

According to the report, Zurich is still the most expensive city (including and excluding rent), along with Geneva, Oslo, Copenhagen and New York. Luxembourg takes the top honors for purchasing power (gross hourly pay). Hong Kong, one of the world’s most expensive cities, is also at the bottom when it comes to cost of goods that millennial aspire to buy.