Pordata's Wednesday 27 May Read off Eurostat Sets the Portuguese Working Week at 37.4 Hours — 1.5 Hours Above the 35.9-Hour EU Average and Sixth Among the 27 Member States as the Reforma Laboral and 3 June Greve Geral Reopen the Carga-Horária File

Pordata — the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation's Portuguese statistical database — released a Wednesday 27 May 2026 read off the latest Eurostat 2025 Labour Force Survey tape that fixes the average Portuguese working week at 37.4 hours, against an EU-27 average of 35.9 hours. The Portuguese reading sits 1.5 hours above the European mean and is the sixth-highest among the 27 Member States. The release lands seven days before the 3 June general strike called by the CGTP and dominates the labour-market data conversation that frames the Government's reforma laboral package now under parliamentary scrutiny.

The 27-Country Ranking — Bulgaria Tops at 39.0h, the Netherlands Closes at 32.1h

The Eurostat read covers actual hours worked per week by employed persons aged 20-64 in their main jobs, blending full-time and part-time profiles. The 2025 reading shows the EU-27 average has eased from 36.9 hours in 2015 to 35.9 hours a decade later — a one-hour-per-week structural decline across the bloc as part-time penetration, parental leave usage and statutory carga-horária reductions in northern Member States compress the bloc-wide mean.

The 2025 ranking puts Bulgaria at the top of the table at 39.0 hours per week, followed by Greece (38.4h), Poland (38.2h), Romania (38.1h) and Croatia (37.6h). Portugal at 37.4 hours takes the sixth slot, ahead of Cyprus, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia, Italy and Spain. At the other end, the Netherlands closes the table at 32.1 hours — the canonical part-time-share northern Member State — followed by Germany at 34.7 hours, Denmark at 33.6 hours, Ireland at 35.7 hours and Finland at 35.8 hours. The Iberian split is worth flagging: Portugal at 37.4h sits a full hour above Spain at 36.4h.

The Year-on-Year Read — Portuguese Hours Holding Above 37

The Portuguese 37.4-hour reading marks a fractional easing from the 37.6-hour read Pordata booked in 2024 and the 37.7-hour reading in 2023 — a slow, technical drift downward consistent with the gradual rise of part-time and platform-work shares inside the headcount denominator. But the level is structurally sticky: Portuguese full-time contracts retain the 40-hour statutory cap under the Código do Trabalho, and the actual-hours-worked metric tends to track within a one-hour band of that cap because Portuguese collective-bargaining culture is anchored more tightly to the legal week than the northern-Member-State norm of negotiated 35-or-37-hour weeks.

The earlier 1 May 2026 Pordata read — which used a different Eurostat aggregate (usual hours in the main job) and pegged Portugal at 39.7 hours for fifth place behind Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Greece — captures the same structural fact from a different angle. The actual-hours-worked metric used in the 27 May release sits below the usual-hours figure because the actual metric reflects vacation, sickness, parental-leave and short-week effects across the survey reference period, while the usual-hours metric reflects the contractual baseline.

The Reforma Laboral Frame — 12 Propositions Through the Conselho de Ministros, Greve Geral Six Days Out

The reading lands inside the most consequential labour-market policy cycle Portugal has run in fifteen years. The reforma laboral approved by the Conselho de Ministros on Wednesday 14 May 2026 — twelve clusters of proposals running from term-contract extension to outsourcing-friction reduction to banco-de-horas working-time accumulation — is now sitting in the Assembleia da República for the generalidade debate. The UGT rejected the package as 'altamente lesivo' for workers; the CGTP called the 12.ª greve geral for Wednesday 3 June 2026 against the package, with the adhesion list now including CP rail, TAP cabin crew, Autoeuropa workers, AIMA mediators and the Frente Comum public-administration union.

The 37.4-hour Pordata reading is the labour-market context number that both sides will weaponise in the June debate cycle. The Government's case for the reforma — and especially for the working-time-flexibility clusters around banco-de-horas, the four-day-week pilot and the term-contract extension — leans on the framing that Portuguese carga horária is structurally above the EU mean and that the productivity-per-hour-worked gap is the binding constraint on real-wage growth. The CGTP-and-UGT counter-framing is that the 37.4-hour reading is itself the problem: Portuguese workers are already putting in 1.5 more hours per week than the EU norm for materially lower per-hour compensation, and the reforma's working-time-flexibility track risks pushing the carga horária further up the ladder rather than closing the productivity gap on the wage side. The 3 June greve geral framing has tightened across the past week as the adhesion list has broadened to encompass the AIMA-side strike on the same day.

The Per-Hour Wage Translation — Eurostat 2024 Productivity Reads

Strip the 37.4 hours into a per-hour wage frame and the Portuguese position is sharper. Eurostat's 2024 labour productivity per hour worked series puts Portugal at 76.2% of the EU-27 average — Portuguese workers produce, on average, three-quarters of the value-added per hour that the bloc-wide mean does. Combine that with the 4.2% above-EU-mean hours, and the implied gap between Portuguese gross labour cost per worker and the EU mean is meaningfully narrower than the productivity gap — Portuguese workers absorb a part of the productivity gap by working more hours for less per-hour compensation. The per-hour earnings reading from the latest INE data puts the Portuguese median hourly wage at €7.78 against an EU median above €16.

The Sectoral Breakdown — Hotels, Restaurants and Manufacturing Above the Mean

The Eurostat detail isolates the sector-by-sector reads. Hotels and restaurants (NACE I) book the steepest Portuguese weekly hours at 38.7 hours, followed by manufacturing (NACE C) at 38.3 hours, construction (NACE F) at 38.2 hours and transport and storage (NACE H) at 38.0 hours. Public administration (NACE O) prints below the national mean at 36.2 hours, education (NACE P) at 34.1 hours and health and social work (NACE Q) at 35.9 hours. The sectoral pattern is the canonical one — the hospitality, manufacturing and transport stacks pull the national average up; the public-sector and education stacks pull it down.

The Working-Age Demographics — Portuguese 55-64 Hours Sit Above Younger Cohorts

Cut the read by age bracket and a second feature surfaces: Portuguese workers aged 55-64 book a weekly average of 38.1 hours, slightly above the 20-54 cohorts at 37.3 hours. The pattern is opposite to the EU average, where older workers typically book fewer hours than the prime working-age cohorts because of the part-time and gradual-retirement pathways available in northern Member States. The Portuguese inversion reflects the absence of a meaningful gradual-retirement pension product and the structural reality that Portuguese workers in their late fifties and early sixties remain attached to full-time employment at near-statutory hours.

What This Means for Expats — The Bottom Line

• If you are negotiating a Portuguese employment contract, the 40-hour statutory cap is the baseline and the 37.4-hour actual reading is the operational norm. Expat-targeted contracts in Lisbon and Porto — tech, finance, BPO, professional services — tend to cluster at the full 40-hour week. The drift down from 40 to 37.4 across the population comes through legitimate vacation, sickness and short-week effects rather than a contractual 37-hour week.
• The reforma laboral's working-time-flexibility track is the policy lever that could lift the 37.4-hour reading further. The banco-de-horas extensions and the term-contract working-time arrangements both increase the available statutory ceiling on individual weeks while keeping the annual cap fixed. If you are inside a full-time contract, the practical effect over the next 12-24 months is more individual-week volatility around the headline 37.4-hour mean.
• The 3 June greve geral is the second-most-consequential single-day disruption Portugal has seen since the 2013 austerity cycle. Plan around it for any AIMA, banking, transport or government-services interaction. The 37.4-hour Pordata reading is one of the data points the CGTP will use in the strike-day messaging.
• The hotels-and-restaurants 38.7-hour reading is the Algarve and Lisbon hospitality benchmark. Expats working in the hospitality stack — from Algarve hotel staff to Lisbon restaurant kitchens — are above the national mean by a meaningful margin and disproportionately exposed to the bank-of-hours, weekend-roster and parental-time-off clauses inside the reforma laboral.
• The per-hour earnings gap (€7.78 vs €16+ EU median) is the structural counterpart to the 37.4-hour reading. The combined picture — longer hours at lower per-hour pay — is what the policy debate ahead of the OE2027 cycle will frame. Watch the IRS-bracket conversation in the autumn budget for the wage-side response to the labour-reform package.

Pordata's full reading is downloadable from pordata.pt with the historical series back to 2003 and the Eurostat-aligned country comparator. The Eurostat 2025 Labour Force Survey detailed tape is at ec.europa.eu/eurostat. The next Eurostat-labour read is scheduled for end-June 2026 with the 2026 Q1 actuals.