How long until 5pm?

How long people work now

US full-time workers put in 8.5 hours on the weekdays they worked. On the weekend days they worked anyway, it was 5.5.

UK full-time workers average 36.7 hours a week. Australia’s figure is about 31, but it counts part-timers too, so it won’t win you an argument about workload.

When the day ends

Tracking software puts the average workday at 8 am to 4:39 pm. In 2022 it ended at 5:21 pm, so people have quietly taken back 42 minutes. Mornings went the other way: first activity at the keyboard is now 7:48 am, not 8:02.

A 5 pm finish sits 21 minutes past the tracked average. That’s 21 minutes of standing near your coat, or of browsing the excuses to leave work early.

Fridays end earlier still. Tracked log-offs on a US Friday average 4:03 pm, so how long until Friday takes a Friday finish of its own. The retirement countdown is the one that never resets overnight.

Days that end on another hour have their own clocks. How long until 3pm is for the 7 to 3, until 4pm for the 8 to 4 and until 6pm for the 9 to 6. Those three keep to their hour. This one takes yours.

The last minutes before 5

A call comes in just before 5 and runs well past it. As the coats go on, a new task lands. Nobody logs either as overtime.

In offices that count minutes, people count them back. They stop starting new work in the last hour. Logging in at 9 on the dot means the laptop’s morning updates run on company time. Where lateness is docked in whole blocks, someone a minute late finishes their coffee outside and walks in when the block runs out.

Plenty of offices have a favourite who arrives after the boss and leaves after the boss, and nobody has ever timed them. Other teams skip all of it. At 5 someone says go home, and everyone does.

From home, a mouse jiggler on a plug timer does the leaving for you. It’s the low-tech way to keep Teams active, and it cuts out at 5, so your status goes yellow when your team’s does. Set it a few minutes later and you look keen.

Meetings between 9 and 5

Half of all meetings land between 9 and 11 am or between 1 and 3 pm, the day’s two natural peaks. The meetings got there first.

The day doesn’t stop at 5 either. Meetings starting after 8 pm are up 16% in a year. Chats sent outside the weekday 9 to 5 are up 15%, to 58 per person, and by 10 pm 29% of active workers are back in their inbox.

The legal working week

A US workweek is any fixed 168 hours your employer picks, so yours might start on a Wednesday. The 40 hours count from wherever it starts.

How long until 5pm in EST, CST and PST

The countdown is to 5 pm where you are. Four time zones an hour apart cover the mainland US, so 5 pm Eastern is 4 Central, 3 Mountain and 2 Pacific. When New York logs off, Los Angeles has three hours to go, and New York’s last email lands in them.

Arizona, except the Navajo Nation, and Hawaii don’t change their clocks. In summer, 5 pm in Phoenix comes at the same moment as 5 pm in Los Angeles, and 5 pm in New York is 11 am in Honolulu.