Catalans work almost 500,000 unpaid overtime hours every week

In 2025, each Spanish worker performed 5.6 hours of unpaid overtime per week, according to an analysis presented this Monday by the CCOO economic team. This study concludes that €141 per week, equivalent to €7,355 per year, went unpaid in wages and social security contributions for employees due to this unpaid work. This represents 2.49 million unpaid overtime hours, affecting a total of 441,000 people, or 2.3% of the salaried population. In Catalonia, workers put in 495,000 hours of overtime each week, making it the second-highest autonomous community after Madrid (582,000 hours). In fact, Catalonia has 91,000 salaried workers who worked more hours per week than stipulated in their contracts for the same pay, also ranking second. Even so, in terms of the proportion of the total salaried workforce, it fell to fourth place, with 2.7% of Catalans working unpaid overtime. According to the CCOO union, using data from the Labor Force Survey (EPA) of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), there are 928,000 people who regularly worked more hours than agreed upon, without any data indicating that these hours were paid or subject to social security contributions. Within this figure, the report emphasizes, there are 568,000 workers with a 40-hour workweek who regularly worked more hours, "which, a priori, would violate labor legislation regarding working hours." The union estimates that the 2.49 million unpaid overtime hours averaged weekly in 2025 would equate to an annual labor cost of €3.243 billion that companies and public administrations failed to pay workers. This sum includes not only wages but also social security contributions and direct taxes that are no longer being collected by the Tax Agency. Education, the most affected sector

By sector, those with the highest volume of unpaid overtime were education (440,000 hours), transportation and storage (270,000), manufacturing (255,000), and retail (217,000). The teachers' union also has the most workers affected by this labor issue, with 72,000 people working more hours per week than agreed upon without any additional compensation. In contrast, if we look at the incidence, the electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply sector and the financial and insurance sector have the highest percentage of employees working unpaid overtime, at 5.6% in both cases. Education ranks third, with 4.9% of its employees in this situation. On the other hand, the sectors with the highest average intensity of unpaid overtime are transportation (8.3 hours), agriculture and livestock farming (7.1 hours), and construction (6.5 hours).

"This is a form of labor exploitation that has persisted for decades and has not been significantly reduced in recent years, despite the approval of specific regulations such as mandatory recording of working hours," denounces the CCOO analysis. Precisely, the reform of this registry to make it 100% digital And the measure, which includes real-time access for the Labor Inspectorate, has not yet been definitively approved, despite the unions' insistence. It is currently before the Council of State before receiving the green light from the Council of Ministers, and will then have to go through Congress for debate.