21% of employed people worked on weekends in 2025
Working on weekends was more common among service and sales workers (47.6%), skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers (47.2%) and people with elementary occupations (25.7%).
Source dataset: lfsa_qoe_3b3
Only 18.5% of employees usually worked during weekends. By contrast, the share was higher among self-employed people: 45.8% for those with employees (employers) and 35.9% for those without employees (own-account workers), as well as 45.1% among contributing family workers.
Across the EU countries, Greece had the highest share of employees working on weekends (31.5%), followed by Cyprus (31.3%) and Malta (29.2%). Meanwhile, the lowest rates were recorded in Lithuania (3.0%), Poland (4.2%) and Hungary (6.2%).
Source dataset: lfsa_qoe_3b3
For self-employed people with employees working on weekends, Greece had the highest share at 75.0%, followed by Belgium (65.9%) and France (61.0%), while Hungary (9.9%), Slovakia (15.0%) and Poland (15.1%) recorded the lowest shares.
This article marks the International Workers’ Day celebrated annually on 1 May.
For more information
- Thematic section on quality of employment
- Database on quality of employment
- Statistics4beginners on the labour market
Methodological notes
- Work on weekends: percentage of employed persons usually working on Saturday or Sunday.
- Professional status classifies the employed people with respect to the type of labour contract: employees, self-employed persons with employees (employers), self-employed persons without employees (own-account workers) and contributing family workers.
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