What this page is. A record of what each immigration authority actually publishes about working on a student permission, read at the publisher on 5 August 2026. Where an authority publishes no number, this page says so instead of repeating one from elsewhere. We earn nothing from where you apply, and we link no university, agent or recruiter. See our editorial policy and how education agents earn.
This is the page most likely on this site to get somebody into trouble, so it is worth being blunt about what a work limit is. It is not an employment rule. It is a condition of your permission to be in the country. Breaching it is not a payroll problem to be corrected later; it is a breach of status, and in most systems it puts the permission itself at risk. That is why this page refuses to state a number it could not read at the authority that sets it.
What each authority publishes, read 5 August 2026
| Country | What the authority publishes | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Canada | 24 hours a week off campus during class sessions. Unlimited during breaks scheduled by your institution, such as summer, winter holidays and reading weeks. Eligibility conditions apply and are set out on the same page | IRCC, work off campus. Page modified 15 April 2026 |
| Germany | 140 full days or 280 half days a year without approval from the Federal Employment Agency, or up to 20 hours a week during the lecture period, with unrestricted work in semester breaks | Make it in Germany, the Federal Government portal |
| Netherlands | 16 hours a week, or full time during June, July and August. Your employer must hold a work permit for you. Self employment is not capped in hours | IND, student residence permit |
| Norway | 20 hours a week, including remote work, alongside studies. Full time during holidays. The permission attaches automatically when the study permit is granted | UDI, study permit |
| Sweden | 15 hours a week at bachelor and master level, for residence permits granted on or after 11 June 2026 | Swedish Migration Agency |
| Switzerland | At most 15 hours a week outside the holidays, and not before six months from the start of the course. The employer applies and the school must confirm the work will not delay the qualification | Ordinance on Admission, Residence and Employment, article 38, Fedlex. Read in the browser on 5 August 2026 because Fedlex refuses automated retrieval |
| United Kingdom | No hour figure is published on the Student visa pages. GOV.UK states only that what you may do depends on your course and on whether it is term time. The hour limits sit in Home Office caseworker guidance rather than in the public visa pages | GOV.UK, Student visa: work |
| South Korea | No weekly hour figure is published in English. Part time work is a permission you must be granted, not an allowance you hold. It is refused if the work takes more hours or earns more than the studies, and holders of a short single entry visa may not do it at all | HiKorea |
| Australia | Up to 48 hours a fortnight while the course of study or training is in session. Read at the Department of Home Affairs subclass 500 page on 5 August 2026, after four sessions in which the source could not be reached. Australia expresses its cap per fortnight rather than per week, which materially changes how an uneven work pattern is judged: a heavy week is permissible if the fortnight as a whole stays within the limit | Department of Home Affairs, subclass 500 conditions |
| United States | Not read at source today. The limit is set in federal regulation at 8 CFR 214.2(f)(9), not on a guidance page, and the two federal pages we tried did not state it in a quotable form. On campus and off campus work are governed separately, and off campus work generally requires prior authorisation | 8 CFR 214.2(f) |
| France | Not read at source today. The permitted annual hours are set in law rather than on a guidance page and we could not read them at a French source in this pass. The page previously stated 964 hours a year with no publisher; that figure has been withdrawn | Code governing entry and residence of foreign nationals |
| Ireland | Not read at source today. The Immigration Service Delivery pages refused retrieval on every attempt. Work rights are conditions of the student permission and differ between term and holiday periods | Immigration Service Delivery |
Five of twelve entries above are gaps. That is an unusually honest table for this subject and it is deliberate: the four authorities we could not read are precisely the four whose numbers are most often repeated by third parties, and repeating them is how a wrong figure becomes universal.
What this page got wrong before 5 August 2026
The page previously presented a country by country landscape under a line saying the figures were “verified 1 August 2026”, with no publisher named and no link to any authority. Two specific corrections matter:
- The French figure of 964 hours a year has been withdrawn, because we could not read it at a French source.
- The Swedish rule has been restated precisely. The 15 hour cap applies to residence permits granted on or after 11 June 2026 and to bachelor and master level. A permit granted before that date is not governed by it, which is the sort of detail a bare number hides.
The five rules that decide whether you are compliant
1. A cap is a condition, not a target
Every system treats the cap as a ceiling on what you may do, not an entitlement you may average out across a year. In systems that count per week, a heavy week is a breach even if the month averages below the limit. In systems that count per fortnight, such as Australia, an uneven pattern is permitted within the fortnight and not across two of them.
2. Definitions vary more than the numbers do
Germany counts days, not hours, which suits concentrated vacation work and penalises a steady weekly job in a way an hour cap would not. The Netherlands opens the summer entirely but restricts term time tightly. Switzerland delays the right by six months regardless of hours. Two countries with the same nominal weekly cap can therefore produce completely different working lives.
3. Somebody other than you may carry the obligation
In the Netherlands, your employer must hold a work permit for you, so a job offer is not sufficient by itself. In Switzerland, the employer applies and the school must confirm the work will not delay your qualification. In South Korea, you must be granted permission before you begin. An employer who says “we will sort out the paperwork later” is describing a breach.
4. Unpaid, remote and self employed work still count, until they do not
Norway states explicitly that remote work counts toward the 20 hours. The Netherlands treats self employment differently from employment. Unpaid internships are often inside the cap and sometimes outside it. None of these can be reasoned out from first principles; each has to be read.
5. The cap is not a funding plan, and no authority will let it be one
Every system that grants work rights also requires you to evidence funds without them. That is not an accident: it is the point. Work rights exist so that you can manage cash flow, not so that you can finance study. If your plan only works with earnings, it is a plan the authority has already told you it will not accept. Run it at zero earnings; our proof of funds explained and what each government requires you to show set out what has to be evidenced instead.
The arithmetic worth doing, on your own numbers
We publish no expected earnings, because no authority publishes them and the figure would depend on your city, your hours and your job. What you can do is bound the maximum. Take the cap in hours, take the statutory minimum wage where one exists, and multiply. Ireland’s national minimum wage is EUR 14.15 an hour for workers aged 20 and over from 1 January 2026, published by the Workplace Relations Commission, read 5 August 2026. That product is a ceiling on gross earnings before tax and before any week you do not work. Treat it as the most optimistic case, not the expected one, and then test your plan without it.
What we could not source
- Australian, United States, French and Irish work hour limits, at their own authorities, today.
- Any earnings figure, in any country, from any authority.
- Tax treatment of student earnings, which varies by country and by residence status and belongs with a tax authority rather than here.
Before you accept a job offer
Print this and answer every line from the authority’s own page, not from an employer.
What actually happens if you exceed the cap
Applicants routinely assume a breach is dealt with the way a parking fine is: a penalty, paid, forgotten. It is not. In every system we read, working beyond the permitted limit is a breach of the conditions of the permission, and the permission is the thing at risk.
The mechanism is worth understanding because it is not discretionary in the way people hope. Payroll data, tax records and employer reporting create a record of hours and earnings that is visible to the state, and it does not expire when your course does. The consequences appear later, at the points where the state next has to make a decision about you:
- At extension. A request to extend a student permission is an opportunity for a caseworker to look at your compliance history. This is where most breaches surface.
- At the switch to a post study or work route. The most valuable permission most students ever apply for, and the one most sensitive to a compliance record.
- At the settlement or citizenship stage, years later. Good character and lawful residence tests reach back over long periods.
- For the employer. In systems where the employer carries the permit obligation, they carry the penalty too, which is why a compliant employer will refuse to schedule you over the cap, and an employer who does not care is telling you something about the rest of the job.
The defensive habit is simple and costs nothing: keep your own record of hours worked, by week, with the dates of your institution’s official teaching and vacation periods written alongside. If a question ever arises, the burden of showing compliance falls on you, and an employer’s payroll system is organised around pay periods rather than around your permission’s counting period.
If you think you may already have exceeded a limit, the answer is not to stop keeping records. Establish the actual rule, establish the actual hours, and take proper advice from a regulated adviser in that country. This site explains process; it cannot advise you on your own case.
Keep reading
For the money tests these rules sit alongside: proof of funds explained, what each government requires you to show and the costs by country table. For the visa itself: how to get a student visa, what the requirements actually are, what governments publish about processing times and what changed in 2026. Country guides: Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and Australia. For funding that does not depend on hours, how scholarships get won.
This page explains process and published rules. It is not immigration advice and it is not employment or financial advice. Rules are published by the authorities named, on the dates stated, and authorities change them without notice.
