For many of us, the working day seems to take over our lives, getting longer and longer (especially if you work for yourself) however, according to new research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) our ‘long hours culture’ may well now be a myth.

In the final quarter of 2009 only four EU countries, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden, had shorter average working weeks than the UK. This does not mean we’re all getting lazy – the loss of nearly one million full-time jobs and a shift to part-time working since the start of the recession has resulted in a drop of almost 10 per cent in the number of UK men working more than 45 hours a week. In spring 2010 there were as many people in the UK working between 16 and 30 hours per week as there were those working 45 hours or more per week.

The study of official UK and EU statistics finds that the recession has resulted in both a fall in total employment (down by 2 per cent to 580,000 in the two years to spring 2010), and a shift from full-time employment (which has fallen by 4.1 per cent to 910,000), to part-time employment (which has increased by 4.4 per cent to 330,000). The combined impact of these changes is a net fall of 32.7 million (3.5 per cent) in the number of hours worked each week in the UK.

Women have not been affected by this shift, with no net change in the number of women working more than 45 hours per week. The small fall in female employees working long hours is exactly offset by an increase in the number of self-employed women – another symptom of the recession.