Whether they are Luxembourg residents or cross-border commuters, employees face increasingly long commutes - which chip away at post-work and family life.

In addition to their contractual hours, employees in Luxembourg must also travel for their commute, which is known as 'forced working time'. Taken together, these two elements extend the working week well beyond 40 full-time hours.

In its 'Quality of Work Index' study for 2023, the Chamber of Employees (CSL) surveyed employees in the Grand Duchy about their commutes:

For a full-time resident, the workload - excluding commute - reaches 43 hours and 24 minutes per week, as they anticipate working overtime. To which they will then add around 5 hours and 24 minutes of commuting time per week. Almost an hour a day. That's a total of 48 hours and 48 minutes of forced time per week. Together, overtime and commuting time add up to the equivalent of a sixth working day.

For a cross-border commuter, the 'forced' time accelerates even further: 53 hours and 18 minutes per week. They work slightly more than residents (43 hours and 42 minutes) and have to cope with longer commutes of 9 hours and 36 minutes per week. That's just under 2 hours a day spent on the road or in transport.

Explains the CSL: "In 2023, the length of a single journey to work averaged at around 44 minutes. The journey time is 32 minutes for residents and 57.6 minutes for cross-border commuters, and this gap has widened considerably in recent years to the disadvantage of cross-border commuters, with a peak in 2020 (+28 min)."

RTL

Work and commuting make up the "forced" time of employees in Luxembourg. / © Chambre des salariés

Are increasingly long commutes going to drive employees away from Luxembourg?

On the basis of this observation, the CSL worries that satisfaction with working time is expected to decline as commuting time increases. And its study confirms this: after 30 minutes for a single journey, the proportion of dissatisfied workers is 'already greater than that of those satisfied with the situation'. Then 'the mood shifts sharply from 46 minutes onwards, with the majority (58%) of those dissatisfied. After 60 minutes, the proportion of dissatisfied passengers rises to 80%'. Cross-border commuters are therefore very concerned here.

Coupled with the decline in remote working and the difficulties of disconnecting from work, this 'time constraint' directly affects the lives of workers, who have to make do with less time for their personal activities.

This spillover of work into private life is one of the main sources of concern for the CSL. It is also one of the four reasons often cited by those considering changing jobs to find something better.

According to Jobs.lu, which studied the issue in 2022, the commute could drive away almost half of the country's employees.