Luxembourg employees worked most of their hours in 2020 with a high rate of people transitioning to remote working Shutterstock

Luxembourg employees worked most of their hours in 2020 with a high rate of people transitioning to remote working Shutterstock

Employees in the grand duchy mostly upheld their hours during the pandemic last year, data by Eurostat shows, while countries relying on tourism saw employment plummet.

Across the EU, the number of actual hours worked on the job fell by 12% in 2020 compared to 2019, the European statistics office said in a .

Greece (-19.7%), Spain (-19.5%), Portugal and Italy (both -19%) saw the biggest decreases in the EU. The tourism industries in the countries came largely to a standstill because of lockdown measures early on in the pandemic. Travel has only gradually resumed.

Luxembourg was among the countries reporting the least amount of change in hours worked at only -4.1% compared to 2019, ranking in second place together with Denmark. Only the Netherlands (-3.2%) lost fewer working hours because of the pandemic.

The grand duchy’s financial services industry and other sectors of the economy switched to remote working when Luxembourg went into lockdown mid-March, allowing business to continue mostly uninterrupted.

Previously published by Eurostat showed that nearly a quarter of Luxembourg’s workforce worked mostly from home last year, the second-highest rate in the EU behind Finland (25.1%).