745,000 people die every year due to working too long
Long working hours as a health risk. (Photo: Tirachard Kumtanom / Shutterstock)
Long working hours cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year. This was the result of the first global analysis on the subject by WHO and ILO.
Around the world, around one in ten employees works 55 hours a week or more – this corresponds to an eleven-hour working day assuming a five-day week. Not only too long, but also dangerous to health, as an analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) has shown. According to this, around 745,000 people died of cardiovascular diseases in the 2016 study period because they had to work too long.
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The risk of stroke is significantly higher for frequent workers
According to the analysis, those who work 55 or more hours a week are 35 percent more likely to have a stroke than those who work 35 to 40 hours a week. The risk of dying from coronary artery disease increases by 17 percent for those who work a lot. Men, who are responsible for 72 percent of the deaths analyzed, as well as middle-aged or old working people are particularly at risk. When it comes to regions, countries like China, South Korea, Australia and Japan are particularly affected, as the WHO said on Monday announced.
“Most of the deaths were recorded in people between the ages of 60 and 79 who had worked 55 hours or more per week between the ages of 45 and 74,” the experts said. Long working hours, according to the WHO, are responsible for around a third of all estimated work-related illnesses. The consequences of long working hours would show up after about ten years.
WHO: No job is worth a higher risk of disease
For the analysis, WHO and ILO brought together a total of 2,300 surveys from 154 countries and the findings from almost 60 studies from 1970 to 2018. The experts were therefore able to state that the number of those who died of cardiovascular diseases due to long working hours was 29 percent lower in 2000, such as CNBC writes. The conclusion of the WHO: No job is worth the risk of a stroke or heart disease.
