ABSTRACT
This chapter will consider how various aspects of the structure of national economies are affecting working time, drawing extensively on the 15 ILOcommissioned country studies. While there are a number of structural economic changes that could be investigated, it is necessary to choose a few specific developments on which to focus the present analysis. Two such developments would appear to have particularly important implications for working time. The first aspect we shall examine is the ‘tertiarization’ of national economies – that is, the dramatic expansion in size and importance of the service sector in many countries, in terms of its contribution to both economic output and total employment. The hours of work and the ways in which working time is organized in service industries such as the retail trade is often very different from working time patterns in traditional industries such as manufacturing, mining and construction (Messenger, ed., 2004). In fact, as we will see, the service sector is exercising an important influence on working time patterns around the world. This chapter will review working hours and work schedules that are commonly deployed in the services sectors of the economies in developing and transition countries, as well as how these working time patterns vary by subsectors within services.
