Atypical hours: a reality for the majority of workers in France

The majority of workers would work atypical hours. This is what an opinion from the National Health Security Agency (Anses) reveals, published this Wednesday, September 2. According to the latter, “between 55% and 75% of workers who have a job in France are exposed to at least one form of atypical working hours”.

A significant share of assets in France therefore. “Employees, public agents or self-employed, whatever the profession, all workers can be affected […] by atypical hours during their professional life,” continues ANSES. This advocates the supervision of this pace of work which has effects on health and the socio-family sphere.

What are “atypical hours”?

This is the main subject in the Anses opinion, so we might as well explain what this corresponds to. And the least we can say is that this is difficult since there is no common definition of this notion. The health agency also takes the liberty of reminding us: “Currently, the notion of atypical hours does not correspond to any legal category in French and European law. » She “invites the public authorities” to adopt one.

For its analysis, Anses therefore retained three forms of atypical working hours: working on weekends, working long hours of more than 8 hours per day and/or 40 hours per week, working shifts between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. and between 7 p.m. and midnight. Night work, which is also considered work with atypical hours, was not taken into account for this study. So that’s the definition.

To carry out this analysis, the health agency encountered a lack or even absence of data on several points. The exact duration of breaks during long working days is, for example, unknown, “only the length of the working day being reported”. Several hypotheses, “from the most restrictive to the broadest”, were thus formulated by ANSES. This is why we end up with this range going from 55% to 75% (76.22% to be precise) of the forms of atypical schedules studied.

Different figure and definition for INSEE

As written previously, there is no common definition of the concept of atypical working hours. ANSES has its own definition, just like INSEE and DARES.

For INSEE, atypical hours refer to work on weekends and work during staggered hours (evenings from 8 p.m. to midnight, or nights from midnight to 5 a.m.). Result: In 2025, 46% of employees report working at least once, over a period of one month, during an atypical time slot.

For its part, the ministerial statistical service on the world of work (Dares) recently put precise data online on Sunday work and night work. Thus, in 2025, 23.2% of employed people worked at least one Sunday over a period of one month. For night work, this concerns 10.9% of employed people.