TL;DR: On May 12, 2026, France's DARES (the labor ministry's statistics arm) published Who are the day-count workers and how is their work organized? (Dares Analyses no. 20, Fouad Amar). In 2024, 2.4 million employees are on a "forfait annuel en jours" — an annual work agreement counted in days, not hours — which is 15.1% of full-time private-sector employees. On average, they work 208 hours more per year than other full-timers — about five and a half extra weeks of work. More evenings, more remote, and a scheme that has accelerated in the last five years.

A scheme that settled in without much noise

The forfait en jours, introduced by the Aubry laws in 2000, rests on a simple idea: stop counting hours, count working days over the year (218 max under most agreements). In exchange, the employee is supposed to have real autonomy in how they manage their schedule.

Since the early 2000s, the share of employees covered has risen steadily. DARES even flags an acceleration in the recent period: between 2019 and 2024, diffusion took off. What started as a scheme for a sliver of senior managers is now the default for one in seven full-time private-sector employees.

Who is on it?

The profile DARES paints isn't surprising — but it's worth stating clearly:

  • Managers, overwhelmingly. The scheme tracks the statutory line: it's the working-time arrangement for autonomous managers, by construction.
  • Mid-career. Rare at the start of a career, rare again at the end, the day-count peaks in the 30-50 age bracket — when people take on responsibility and are expected to "manage their own time".
  • Slightly more men than women, with the gap widening past age 45. DARES doesn't pick a cause, but the gap maps onto the male over-representation in senior management.
  • More common in large firms, where HR infrastructure and collective agreements can frame the scheme.
  • Concentrated in finance/insurance and information/communication, two sectors where managers are over-represented. No surprise there.

The number that stings: 208 extra hours a year

This is, for me, the central figure of the note.

In 2024, a day-count employee works on average 1,821 hours a year, versus 1,613 hours for an hour-counted full-time employee. The gap: 208 hours.

HOURS WORKED PER YEAR · 2024 Full-time · hour-counted 1,613 h / year Day-count (forfait jours) 1,821 h / year +208 h ≈ 5.5 extra weeks

208 hours is the equivalent of five and a half extra weeks of work a year — or, if you prefer, about 52 more minutes per working day. This isn't a side-effect, it's the nature of the scheme: you trade hour-counting for a workload measured in days, and the average drifts upward.

Worth noting: DARES is talking about an average. Some day-count managers blow well past that figure, others sit below it. But the central tendency is clear: moving to the day-count, statistically, lengthens your week.

More evenings, more remote

The other contribution of the note is qualitative. Day-count employees:

  • Work more often in the evening, between 8 p.m. and midnight, than other full-time employees. The scheme allows — and, in practice, normalizes — work time spilling outside classic office hours.
  • Telework more often. The two go together: schedule autonomy and location autonomy reinforce each other. Once you stop counting hours, you also stop counting on-site presence.

That tracks with how the scheme is designed. It's also the historical friction point: with no hourly anchor, the "right to disconnect" becomes the only barrier against work expanding into evenings, weekends, and the kitchen table. The note doesn't address that head-on, but its numbers raise it implicitly.

What to take away

  1. The day-count is no longer a marginal scheme. 15.1% of full-time private-sector workers, 2.4 million people: it has become the norm for managers and a standard for many supervisory roles.
  2. Autonomy carries an hourly price tag. +208 h/year on average is not nothing — and this is the first time a French official publication puts such a clean number on the gap.
  3. The work/life boundary is statistical, not legal. More evenings, more remote: the day-count mechanically pushes work into time slots that the hour-counted contract used to fence off by construction.
  4. The recent acceleration deserves attention. If diffusion took off between 2019 and 2024, it's likely two things at once: the generalization of remote work post-Covid, and the reclassification of "para-management" profiles as managers on the day-count. Worth watching.

And beyond

The note presents the data; it doesn't pass judgment. But its numbers open questions worth asking honestly:

  • Are those 208 extra hours offset by real autonomy, or simply absorbed by the workload? The note doesn't say — that's probably the next study.
  • Do evening work and remote work amplify the male-female gap after 45 through mental and domestic load? Open question.
  • Is the 2019-2024 acceleration a catch-up or a new regime? DARES's curve suggests we haven't returned to the pre-Covid baseline.

These aren't conclusions, they're leads. The raw data is there — and it's solid: 2.4 million people, 208 extra hours a year, and a scheme that is settling in.

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