Charted: Days Not Worked per 1,000 — Which OECD Countries Still Lose Material Time to Strikes?

Strike headlines travel faster than strike statistics. A single national walkout can dominate a news cycle; the measure that lets you compare countries over time is quieter and meaner: days not worked per 1,000 employees. ILOSTAT’s industrial-relations series (STR_DAYS_ECO_RT) and the OECD’s long-standing industrial-disputes composites both use that intensity rate so that a large economy and a small one are not ranked by raw person-days alone.

The question for 2026 desks is twofold. First: which OECD reporters still lose material days on that scale? Second: after the 2022–23 inflation bargaining wave, did the bump reverse — or did a handful of countries simply re-price conflict into a higher baseline?

The short answer from the dashboard’s intensity ladder: material conflict is still concentrated. On the latest usable ILOSTAT economy-wide totals (plus careful gap-fills), Canada (375.9 in 2023), Chile (173.5 in 2024), Finland (82.1 in 2024 after a 367.5 spike in 2022), and France (99 in 2022) sit in a different league from Germany (12 in 2024), Australia (10.5), Sweden (0.8), or Switzerland (0.8). The post-2022 bump is real in Canada, Finland, Norway, and (on a major-stoppage estimate) the United States — but the United Kingdom’s drop from 83 in 2023 to 22.7 in 2024 is a clean reminder that a wave can crest and fall without rewriting a country’s long-run strike culture.

Scoreboard: latest days not worked per 1,000

\*UK 2015–19 average is pulled up by large 2016–18 disputes; ILOSTAT is missing 2019–21 totals. †USA rates are BLS major work stoppages ÷ CES employment × 1,000 — not the all-disputes perimeter used by many European NSOs.

Toggle the dashboard’s horizon control from “latest year” to 2015–19 or 2022–24 averages if you want the ranking without a single spike year. That is the right move for Finland (2022) and Canada (2023): the headline year is the story, but the period average is the policy-relevant temperature.

The concentration pattern has not disappeared

International strike comparisons used to be caricatured as “France always, Germany never.” The microdata are messier, but the ordinal map is stubborn. ETUI’s Strike Map decade averages — useful where ILOSTAT economy-wide totals go dark — still place France, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Spain in the high-conflict European club for the 2000s, with Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland near the floor [ETUI / Euronews compilation]. OECD Employment Outlook industrial-dispute tables through the mid-2010s told the same structural story: Southern and some Nordic systems lose far more days per employee than Germanic or East Asian reporters in quiet years [OECD industrial disputes].

What changed after COVID and the inflation spike is not that Sweden suddenly became France. It is that a few mid- and high-conflict systems loaded more idle days into 2022–23, while low-conflict systems mostly stayed low. Germany’s five-year average for 2020–24 is about 10 days per 1,000 on IW Köln’s reading — up from the 2000s, still nowhere near Canada’s 2023 print or Finland’s 2022 spike [IW Köln].

Chile is the important non-European reminder. ILOSTAT shows 382 days per 1,000 in 2019, then a grinding decline to 103.5 in 2023 and a rebound to 173.5 in 2024. That is not a Europe-only inflation story; it is a high-conflict OECD economy whose intensity remains material even after a multi-year cool-down.

Did the post-2022 bump reverse?

Open the dashboard’s Post-2022 bump panel. The chart subtracts each country’s 2015–19 average from its 2022–24 average. Desk rule for a “bump”: recent average at least five days per 1,000 hotter than baseline.

On that rule, Canada and Finland are unambiguous. Canada’s period average jumps from roughly 79 to 244; Finland from 61 to 160. Norway’s recent average (35) also clears the baseline (19), even though 2024 alone (10.9) looks calm. Australia and Portugal show smaller positive deltas. Spain’s recent average is only a couple of days above baseline — noise, not a regime shift.

Reversal is country-specific, not universal:

• United Kingdom: 79.2 (2022) → 83 (2023) → 22.7 (2024). The wave is visible; so is the cool-down.
• Finland: 367.5 (2022) → 31.6 (2023) → 82.1 (2024). Not a full return to the late-2010s quiet years, but nothing like 2022 either.
• Norway: 66.8 (2022) → 26.5 (2023) → 10.9 (2024). Classic crest-and-fade.
• Canada: ILOSTAT’s latest total is still 2023 at 375.9Statistics Canada also flags 2023 person-days not worked as the highest since 1986, concentrated in education and public administration [Statistics Canada]. A 2024 ILOSTAT total is not yet in the panel; treat “reversal” as not yet measurable on this series.
• United States (major-stoppage estimate): ~21 (2022) → ~104 (2023) → ~12 (2024). The Hollywood/auto idle-day year dominates 2023; 2024 looks like a snap-back on the major-stoppage perimeter.

So the honest headline is not “strikes are back permanently.” It is: several OECD systems ran a hot inflation bargaining cycle; some have already cooled; a few (Canada on 2023 data; France on levels) still look structurally expensive in idle days.

Europe’s split screen: France vs Germany vs the Nordics

France’s latest ILOSTAT total (99 in 2022) sits near its 2015–19 average (108). That is the definition of a high-conflict equilibrium: even “normal” French years clear what would be a crisis print in Germany. ETUI’s 2020–21 average for France (79) was lower than the 2010s decade average (128), but still led the European pack in that thin pandemic window [ETUI].

Germany remains the foil. Sparse mid-2010s ILOSTAT coverage, then 5–15 days per 1,000 through 2020–24. IW’s narrative that German industrial action rose from a low base is compatible with the series — and still leaves Germany in the low intensity band on our dashboard thresholds (≥100 high, ≥40 elevated, ≥15 moderate, ≥5 low).

The Nordic contrast inside one model family is sharper than the France–Germany cliché. Finland can print 367 in a single year; Sweden prints 0.8. Norway oscillates with bargaining rounds (50.6 and 42.1 in 2020–21, 66.8 in 2022, then down). Denmark lacks a recent ILOSTAT economy-wide total in the download; ETUI’s 2020–21 average (49) and 2000–09 average (105) still mark it as a high-conflict system by European standards. If your mental model is “Nordic = peaceful,” the Finland and Denmark rows will force a rewrite.

Belgium is another gap-fill case: no recent ILOSTAT economy-wide total, but ETUI’s 2020–21 average (57) and OECD’s older 2008–18 composite (~98) keep it in the elevated European cluster. The dashboard flags these rows when you enable Hide caution / gap-fill.

Outside Europe: Chile hot, Korea cooling, Anglosphere mixed

Chile’s path is the LatAm OECD stress test: multi-year rates above 100 days per 1,000 even after the 2019 peak. Korea moved the other way — 43.5 average in 2015–19 down to 17.8 in 2022–24 — a quieting that rarely makes wire stories. Australia remains in the low-to-moderate band with a mild post-2022 uptick. Poland’s 2019 spike (170.9) is a reminder that single-year shocks happen in otherwise quiet systems; 2020–24 sits near zero again.

North America is a methods minefield. Canada’s ILOSTAT totals are in the same conceptual family as European NSO submissions and show a genuine 2023 explosion. The United States series in ILOSTAT is effectively unusable for ranking (near-zero prints), so the dashboard uses a BLS major-work-stoppage estimate. That perimeter misses small disputes by construction; it still captures why 2023 felt historic in U.S. labor coverage and why 2024 looks quieter on idle days.

How to read the dashboard without fooling yourself

Five panels, on purpose:

1. Intensity ladderordinal ranking for a chosen horizon (latest, 2015–19, 2020–21, or 2022–24).
2. Country trendsannual lines so you can see spikes instead of worshipping averages.
3. Post-2022 bumpdiverging deltas for the core question.
4. Baseline vs recent scattersame comparison in x–y space; points above the diagonal heated up.
5. Intensity bands + ETUI contextdistribution of the panel, plus Europe decade averages for gap-fill honesty.

Use region and hide caution before you screenshot a ranking. A league table that mixes ILOSTAT totals, ETUI gap-fills, and BLS estimates without labels is how bad Twitter charts are born.

Caveats and comparability (read before citing a rank)

National statistical offices disagree on almost every operational detail that matters: minimum size thresholds, whether public-sector strikes are fully covered, whether lockouts count, and how “days not worked” are imputed from hours. The OECD has warned for years that industrial-dispute statistics support trend and ordinal comparisons better than precise level gaps [OECD industrial disputes]. France’s private/public splice in ETUI methodology is a known undercount risk for some public functions. Hungary’s post-2016 ILOSTAT levels look discontinuous versus earlier decades — we show the prints with a caution flag rather than quietly dropping a high bar. Türkiye’s 2024 ILOSTAT total (140,530) is excluded as an implausible outlier pending source correction.

Timing gaps matter too. France’s latest economy-wide total in this pull stops at 2022; Canada’s at 2023; several small European reporters have multi-year holes. “Latest” is not a synchronized OECD snapshot — it is the freshest usable observation per country.

None of that erases the core pattern. On days not worked per 1,000 employees, a short list of OECD economies still lose material time to industrial action; the 2022–23 inflation bargaining wave raised intensity in identifiable places; and by 2024, several of those places had already cooled — without converting Germany into France, or Sweden into Finland.

Sources: ILOSTAT STR_DAYS_ECO_RT (ECO_SECTOR_TOTAL); OECD industrial-disputes composites; ETUI Strike Map averages as compiled in public summaries; IW Köln OECD peer comparison; BLS Major Work Stoppages; Statistics Canada labour-dispute release for 2023.