Duration of working life - statistics

Data extracted in June 2026

Planned article update: July 2027

Highlights

In 2025, the average expected working life in the EU was 37.5 years.

The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Estonia had the longest expected working lives, each exceeding 41 years.

The expected duration of working life was 39.5 years for men and 35.4 for women in 2025.

Over the last decade, expected working life increased from 35.2 to 37.5 years while the gender gap narrowed from 5.0 to 4.1 years.

Source: Eurostat (lfsi_dwl_a)

This article presents statistics on the duration of working life, which measures the number of years a person aged 15 is expected to participate in the labour market during their lifetime. It highlights differences in the expected duration of working life between men and women across countries. More specifically, it focuses on the estimated number of years people are expected to spend in the labour force based on current demographic and labour market conditions.

The statistics in this article are based on the EU labour force survey (EU-LFS).

Steady increase in the expected duration of working life in the EU

The expected duration of working life was on average 37.5 years in the EU in 2025, 39.5 years for men and 35.4 years for women (see Figure 1). Since 2016, the expected duration of working life in the EU has increased steadily, from 35.2 years in 2016 to 35.9 years in 2019. In 2020, linked to the COVID-19 health crisis, the expected duration of working life decreased to 35.6 years.

Despite the small decline in 2020, over the past 10 years, the indicator has witnessed continual growth in the years of working life for both sexes. Although men are expected to work longer than women, the gender gap has fallen with increasing female participation in the labour market. Indeed, the estimated expected duration of working life for men was 37.6 years in 2016, while for women it was 32.6 years. As a result, the gender gap of the expected duration of working life was narrower in 2025 than in 2016 (i.e. 4.1 years compared with 5.0 years).

Figure 1

Expected duration of working life vary across EU countries

In the EU, the expected duration of working life has varied broadly among countries and geographical locations. The Netherlands had the longest duration of working life, 44.0 years. Countries in northern Europe followed, all with durations exceeding 41 years, with Sweden (43.4 years), Denmark (42.6 years) and Estonia (41.5 years) ranking highest. The shortest durations of working life were recorded in Romania (32.7 years) and several southern European countries, including Italy (33.0 years), Bulgaria (34.6 years), Croatia (35.1 years) and Greece (35.3 years).

Map 1: Expected duration of working life, 2025
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_dwl_a)

Gender gap in 2025

In 2025, differences in the average number of years of working life between men and women were observed in all countries. In general men are expected to work longer than women, with northern European countries showing a gender gap below the EU average of 4.1 years. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were the only EU countries where the gender gap was negative, as women are expected to work there for 1.3 years, 0.9 years and 0.7 years more than men, respectively. Among the other countries, the smallest gender gap was recorded in Finland with only 0.7 years. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the countries with the largest gender gap in 2025, were Italy (8.9 years), Romania (6.9 years), Greece (6.7 years) and Malta (6.3 years).

As Figure 2 shows, when comparing EU countries, we find that men are likely to work the longest in the Netherlands (45.9 years), Denmark and Sweden (both 44.5 years), Ireland (43.4 years), Malta (42.2 years) and Cyprus (42.1 years). Conversely, the countries where men are likely to work the least are Bulgaria (35.9 years), Romania (36.0 years), Croatia (36.3 years) and Luxembourg (37.2 years).

Concurrently, the EU countries where women are likely to work less than 30 years in their lifespan are Italy (28.4 years) and Romania (29.1 years). These are followed by Greece (31.8 years), Bulgaria (33.3 years) and Belgium (33.7 years). By contrast, the longest durations of working life for women, i.e. more than 39 years, were in Sweden (42.3 years), the Netherlands (41.9 years), Estonia (41.8 years), Denmark (40.6 years), Finland (39.7 years) and Lithuania (39.3 years).

Figure 2

Different trends among countries

Between 2016 and 2025, the expected duration of working life increased in all EU countries (see Figure 3). Four countries, in particular, experienced a significant increase of 4 or more years: Malta (4.9 years), Hungary and Ireland (both 4.2 years), and the Netherlands (4.1 years). Malta and Hungary, which had below-average expected duration of working life in 2016, had seen sharp increases that brought them above the EU average in 2025. The main reason for Malta’s exceptional growth in expected duration of working life was the significant increase in expected working life among women (7.8 years), the largest gain in any EU country.

By contrast, Romania, Spain, Italy, Germany and Austria experienced relatively stable expected duration of working life, with increases equal to or less than 2 years.

A notable trend in most EU countries was that the duration of women’s working life increased more than that for men, the exceptions being Denmark, Romania, Sweden and Greece. In Malta, Estonia and Hungary the increase was indeed substantially higher for women than for men. In Slovenia, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Belgium, the increases for men and women were roughly the same.

Figure 3

Data sources

Source: The European Union labour force survey (EU-LFS) is the largest European household sample survey providing quarterly and annual results on labour participation among people aged 15 years and over, and on people outside the labour force. It covers residents in private households. Conscripts in military or community service are not included in the results. The EU-LFS is based on the same target populations and uses the same definitions in all countries, which means that the results are comparable between countries. The EU-LFS is an important source of information about the situation and trends in national and EU labour markets. Each quarter around 1.2 million interviews are conducted throughout the participating countries to obtain statistical information for some 100 variables. Due to the diversity of information and the large sample size, the EU-LFS is also an important source for other European statistics like education statistics or regional statistics.

Reference period: Yearly results are obtained by calculating the average of the four quarters in the year.

Coverage: The results from the survey currently cover all European Union countries, the EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), as well as the candidate countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye). For Cyprus, the survey covers only the areas of Cyprus controlled by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.

European aggregates: EU refers to all 27 EU Member States. If data are unavailable for a country, EU aggregates are calculated using the data for the most recent period available for the country in question. Such cases are indicated.

Country notes: The Netherlands collects EU-LFS data using a rolling reference week instead of a fixed reference week, i.e. interviewees are asked about the situation in the week before the interview rather than a pre-selected week.

Definitions and main concepts

The duration of working life is calculated using the labour force participation rates (previously called ‘activity rates’) from the EU labour force survey and life tables from demography statistics. Both the participation rates (in 5-year bands) and the complete life tables (per single year) are published by Eurostat.

The indicator on duration of working life is an estimation of the number of years a person, currently aged 15 years, is expected to be in the labour force (i.e. to be employed or unemployed) throughout their life. It aims to provide a different point of view on the labour market, looking at the entire life cycle of people in the labour force rather than on specific states in the life cycle, such as youth unemployment or early withdrawal from the labour force.

The concepts and definitions used in the EU-LFS follow the resolutions of the International Conference of Labour Statisticians (the ICLS, organised by the International Labour Organization, the ILO). In particular, employed people comprise

(a) people who during the reference week worked for at least one hour for pay or profit or family gain

(b) people who were not at work during the reference week but had a job or business from which they were temporarily absent

The LFS employment concept differs from national accounts domestic employment, as the latter sets no limit on type of household, includes the non-resident population contributing to national GDP and excludes resident population contributing to the GDP of a different country.

Time series

Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 came into force on 1 January 2021 and induced a break in the LFS time series for several EU countries. In order to monitor the evolution of employment and unemployment despite of the break in the time series, EU countries assessed the impact of the break in their country and computed impact factors or break corrected data for a set of indicators. Break-corrected data are published for the EU-LFS main indicators.

Additional methodological information

More information on the EU-LFS can be found via the online publication EU labour force survey, which includes eight articles on the technical and methodological aspects of the survey. The EU-LFS methodology in force from the 2021 data collection onwards is described in methodology from 2021 onwards. Detailed information on coding lists, explanatory notes and classifications used over time can be found under documentation.

Context

The expected duration of working life indicator was developed at the request of the Employment Committee indicators group under the EU 2020 strategy. It uses life expectancy tables and participation rates as input for the calculation. The methodology was developed be Finland's Ministry of Labour and published, in a report by Helka Hytti and Ilkka Nio entitled Monitoring the employment strategy and the duration of active working life.

A common misunderstanding in the public debate on this indicator is that it shows how long people must or should work. This is not the case. The indicator is purely descriptive and shows what is happening, not what should happen.

As the indicator is an average computed over all adults in the country, it is heavily influenced by the number of people outside the labour force in a country. In other words, it does not make any claims about how many years the people who are in employment, work. It rather shows the combined effect of

what proportion of the adult population is in the labour force (being employed or unemployed) in each year of their life
and the life expectancy

Most of the duration of working life can be explained by the labour force participation rate. An illustration for the total population, comparing the expected duration working life with the labour force participation rate in each country, is presented in Figure 4. Based on the given linear regression model, the labour force participation rate explains around 89.5% of the variance in the expected duration of working life suggesting a fairly good fit, as indicated by the coefficient of determination (R²) in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Explore further

Database

Employment and activity - LFS adjusted series (lfsi_emp)), see:

Duration of working life - annual data (lfsi_dwl_a)

Thematic section

Labour market (including Labour force survey)

Publications

Methodology

Publications

ESMS metadata files and EU-LFS methodology

Employment and unemployment (Labour Force Survey) (ESMS metadata file — employ_esms)
LFS main indicators (ESMS metadata file — lfsi_esms)
LFS series - detailed annual survey results (ESMS metadata file — lfsa_esms)

Legislation

EU-LFS main features and legal basis