The silicon.com Skills Survey 2004: Who works the longest and earns the most

The perception of the UK job market is 'long hours, small wage packet', but according to the silicon.com Skills Survey 2004, the UK could be leading the way in Europe over how to treat workers.

silicon.com's sister sites, ZDNet France and ZDNet Germany, posed their readers and the same questions and threw up some results that the hard-working UK techie may not expect.

With legislation passed in 2000 in France that aggressively encouraged a 35-hour working week, it's not exactly surprising to learn that both the French and Germans had a higher percentage of workers putting in less than 35 hours a week: the Germans at 7.5 per cent, the French at 7.8 per cent, with the UK trailing at 6.5 per cent.

That said, the UK leads the continent when it comes to dodging long working hours. The French and Germans have more techies working more than 50 hours – 17.8 per cent and 21.5 per cent – respectively, while just 14.8 per cent of UK workers do the same.

However, the IT industry has always been perceived as one where a long working week is the norm. It's a problem for IT, Terry Watts, e-skills' COO, said.

"We're worried about the attractiveness of the industry because of the long-working day culture," he told silicon.com. "It is evolving though – remote working means you can work more flexible but you're also on call more often, things happen outside the normal day, you end up checking your email at the weekend and so on."

On the wages front, it's an equally mixed bag. Both the UK and Germany have a significantly higher proportion of IT workers who earn less than the Euro equivalent of £25,000. While 22.3 per cent of Brits take home under 25 grand, 35.9 per cent of Germans do and the French have a staggering 54 per cent of staff in the lowest earnings bracket.

That doesn't mean that UK workers are raking it in, however. Compared to those over on the continent who fall into the highest pay bracket of £110,000 and above, the UK is a poor relation. While 3.7 per cent of Germans and 4.3 per cent of French were in the money, just 3.4 per cent of Brits could claim the same.

Overall, the wages situation in the UK has remained stable, with little fluctuation in earning over the silicon.com Skills Surveys in 2002 and 2003.

That doesn't mean IT workers are hard done by, though, it could be a sign of a mature market. Watts said: "There was a huge wage inflation with the dot-com boom... and now we're seeing a rationalisation. The industry does respond to market demand and, if we see, some growth at sustainable levels, wages will increase."