42 hours maximum.

That is the new limit of the work week in Colombia that came into effect this July 15.

This is the last stretch of a gradual adjustment process launched with a law approved in 2021 that reduced the number of working hours from 48 to 42 per week, but without reducing workers' salaries or affecting their social benefits.

The regulations establish that these hours may be distributed flexibly by agreement between the company and the worker in days that will have a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 9 continuous hours.

Workers will not be paid overtime unless they exceed 42 hours per week. In addition, they must have a mandatory day of rest, which may be Sunday or another day.

The reform of the labor system also brings other benefits, such as the increase in the surcharge for Sunday and/or holiday work from 80% to 90%. In addition, from now on the night shift will be counted starting at 7 pm.

The reduction of the working day is an advance in the rights of workers in Colombia, but it does not necessarily mean an improvement in one of the problems that country faces in the field of work: low productivity.

According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Colombia people work an average of 43.2 hours a week while in Germany, by contrast, only 25.6 hours are worked.

All those hours of work, however, do not convert into greater wealth.

In fact, among all OECD member countries, Colombia has the lowest labor productivity, which means that for every hour a person works in that country, they produce less money than in any other nation on the list.

Like Colombia, Mexico is another Latin American country that has decided to reduce its working hours.

In February, the Mexican Congress approved a historic constitutional amendment law to gradually reduce the work week from 48 hours to 40, which will begin to be implemented next year.

The law, which was promoted mainly by President Claudia Sheinbaum and the ruling party, indicates that the work week will be 40 hours by 2030, a substantial change for thousands of workers in the country and that aligns with global trends of reduction in working hours.

In Latin America, other countries such as Ecuador have already implemented the 40-hour work week.

However, different analysts, and mainly opposition parliamentarians, pointed out that the same law increases weekly overtime and, above all, maintains only one day of rest for every six days worked.

According to OECD data, Mexico has one of the worst balances between personal and work life, in addition to low rates of labor productivity and the lowest salaries among the 38 member states of the group, which includes Colombia, Chile and Costa Rica.

But which other Latin American countries have 40 hours in their work week and which have even increased it?

40 hours

Although the 40-hour work week, which is generally divided into five 8-hour days, has been established in most countries in the Western Hemisphere, it has been slow to become the norm in Latin America.

In European countries, initiatives are even being advanced to reduce the work week to four days, with three days off.

However, in the Latin American region, a large number of countries continue with working hours of between 44 and 46 hours per week, which include Saturdays.

This, despite the recommendations of the International Labor Organization (ILO) that seeks to establish a dialogue in the countries of the region that allows working hours that tend to a better balance between personal life and work.

"Time is a finite and irrecoverable resource. The way it is distributed between work, personal life and rest has a profound impact on health, productivity and social cohesion," the organization points out in a 2025 report dedicated to Latin America.

So far, the only country in Latin America that has an 8-hour work week for five days a week is Ecuador. And it has been in force for 46 years.

In August 1980, it became the first country in the region to enable this limited work week.

The other countries that are in the process of reaching 40 hours per week are Chile and Mexico.

In Chile, with the approval of Law 21,561 in April 2024, a process of reducing working hours advances. First it went from 48 to 44 hours; In April the working week was reduced to 42 and it is expected that by April 2028 a total workday of 40 hours per week will finally be reached.

In Ecuador, Chile and Colombia, flexibility is introduced to apply these determinations, where workers can negotiate the best way to work.

However, in Chile the limit of working hours is 10 a day.

From 42 to 44 hours

Colombia is the country in the region that, behind Chile, Ecuador and Mexico, is closest to reducing its working hours to 40 hours, thanks to the reduction of the working day to 42 hours per week that came into effect this July 15.

For decades, the weekly workday of Colombians was 48 hours.

Other countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Brazil have a 44-hour work week.

In Brazil, the region's main economy, the Chamber of Deputies approved in May a proposed amendment to the Constitution to reduce the working day from 44 to 40 hours per week.

The text provides that, once 60 days have passed after the enactment of the amendment, the working day will be limited to 42 hours a week with two days of rest and, after 12 months, it will be reduced to 40 hours.

The Brazilian Senate has already begun to discuss this amendment, but was unable to approve it during the legislative period that ends on July 18, so it has been postponed until later in the second half of the year.

A particularity of this reform is that it also establishes ending the work week with only one day of rest (known as 6 x 1). The idea is that workers can enjoy two days off.

The Argentine case

In general terms, the most established in Latin America is a work week of 48 hours maximum.

Until just five years ago, few countries had a workload of less than 8 hours a day for six days a week.

Currently, this model is maintained by countries such as Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Paraguay.

But the truth is that, according to the ILO, in many of these countries the average number of hours worked per week is closer to 44.

That is why in several of these countries political debates are being carried out to establish laws that formally reduce working hours.

It should be noted that Argentina experienced an agitated debate this year about working hours due to a labor reform proposal promoted by the government of President Javier Milei that allows the working day to be extended from 8 to 12 hours per day, as long as the regulatory rest of 12 hours between work days is maintained, as well as a rest of 35 hours per week.

Specialists have explained that this Argentine law goes against the trends that are being seen around the world, which attempt to reduce the time dedicated to work.

“These types of measures are going to become a brake on business innovation and technological development,” Argentine economist Jorge Torres told the newspaper Público in February, when this regulation had not yet been approved.

“They want to make companies competitive by exploiting workers and not by betting on innovation,” he added.

In addition to changes to the work week, legislative reforms in Latin America have also brought about the opening of dialogue on other issues linked to labor rights, such as vacations, overtime, informal employment and the gender gap in the market.

For example, the average number of vacation days in Latin America is 15 days a year - unlike Europe, where it is 25 - and informality reaches important levels within economic activity.

In Colombia and Mexico, informality reaches 55%, while in other important economies such as Brazil and Argentina it is around 40%.

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