Services workweek falls to 41.6 hours in 2025, shortest in decade

The average paid workweek shortened by 1.5 hours between 2015 and 2025.

Services employees in Singapore worked an average of 41.6 paid hours per week in 2025, marking the shortest workweek for the sector in the past decade, according to the Ministry of Manpower's (MOM) Labour Market Survey.

The average stood at 43.1 hours in 2015 and remained broadly stable over the next few years, reaching 43.2 hours in 2016 before easing to 42.9 hours in both 2018 and 2019.

Weekly paid hours fell to 42.5 hours in 2020 and stayed unchanged in 2021 before continuing to trend lower over the following four years.

The average declined to 42.3 hours in 2022, slipped to 41.8 hours in 2023, edged down to 41.7 hours in 2024, and reached 41.6 hours in 2025.

Overall, the services sector's average paid workweek shortened by 1.5 hours between 2015 and 2025.

Across the total workforce, average weekly paid hours also declined over the same period, falling to 43.1 hours in 2025 from 45.6 hours in 2015.

The figures are from the MOM Labour Market Survey, compiled by the Manpower Research & Statistics Department

Follow the link for more news on

Ministry of Manpower

Chart of the Day

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia