How Many Days Did They Work in 2021?
Every year, UFO No More counts the number of days worked by several royal families. We hope that learning about how many days these families worked during the year might help you put their totals in the “How Much Is It All Worth?” post into perspective. While we only focused on the Scandinavian and Spanish royal families in the 2020 post, this post also includes Queen Maxima, Queen Mathilde, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as well as the Countess of Wessex. We will work to include even more royals in this count next year.
Before diving into the data, we would like to make a brief disclaimer. We know that a lot of attention is usually paid to the number of engagements of the British Royal Family at the end of each year. The UFO No More team decided to count the number of days a royal has worked and not the number of engagements. Thus, the numbers presented in this post for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Countess of Wessex are the number of days they worked in 2021 and not the number of engagements they undertook.
Obviously, it is important to note that there are countless hours of behind-the-scenes and private work and meetings that we don’t know about and thus can’t include in this count. These numbers below reflect the number of days that an announced event was written on the Court’s Calendar (and the Court Circular), events not on the calendar but articles were written about on the Court’s website, events from the various Social Media accounts used by the Courts, and their various organization/charities/foundation’s social media accounts. Multiple events in a single day are calculated as one day.
Now, onto the data. As everyone knows, the 2020 numbers were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and while we can see in the 2021 data that most of the royal families went back to their pre-pandemic work rate this year, is it important to take into account that each country had different measures and restrictions throughout the year that impacted the royal families’ work from time to time.
DENMARK
In the year 2021, a member of the Danish royal family had a publicly announced event a total of 188 days of the year- 51,5% of the days in 2021. It was 153 days in 2020, 227 days in 2019, 220 days in 2018, and 260 days in 2017. We can note that Crown Prince Frederik was Regent for 19 days in 2021 while Crown Princess Mary acted as Regent for 2 days. It was the first time Crown Princess Mary acted as Regent. Prince Joachim and Princess Marie still live in Paris, France, so their workload is still reduced. Prince Joachim has a day job while Princess Marie became a Special Representative for the Danish Embassy in October 2021.
In the overview below, you can see how many days the family worked each month as a whole, a more detailed monthly count for each member of the family, and a 2020-2021 comparison to put the numbers in perspective.
NORWAY
In 2021, a member of the Norwegian royal family had a public engagement a total of 176 days of the year- 48% of the days in 2020. It was 158 days in 2020 and 199 days in 2019. Crown Prince Haakon is still the member of the royal family with the most days worked with 144 days worked (i.e a day where he had an event on the calendar or a day where he had an unannounced event that we had photos of).
Crown Prince Haakon’s workload was very stable as he had worked 145 days in 2020. It has to be noted that since Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, she has had a reduced workload. You can see the monthly details for the family as a whole in the overview below.
SPAIN
In 2020, the Spanish royal family - and mostly King Felipe and Queen Letizia - had been very surprising as they had been the only ones in our count who had worked more than before the pandemic. In April 2020, King Felipe had worked every single day through phone and video calls for example.
While their 2021 numbers are below their 2020 numbers, the Spanish royal family is consistent with their pre-pandemic work rate. Indeed, the family as a whole worked 206 days which is 56,4% of the days in 2021. In 2020, the family had worked 213 days and they had worked 205 days in 2019. This year, we also saw more of Queen Sofia. Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia also attended events with their parents and Princess Leonor had her first solo event back in March 2021. However, it is still important to remember that Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia are still children and thus only attend specific events.
SWEDEN
In 2021, out of the 7 working adult members of the Swedish Royal Family- someone had a publicly announced engagement 210 days of the year. That is 57,5% of the days in 2021 which is more than in 2020. Princess Madeleine spent the majority of her time in Florida where she lives with her family and even though she spent part of the summer and the Christmas holidays in Sweden. Princess Sofia was also on maternity leave for most of the year following the birth of Prince Julian in March.
In the overview below, you can see how many days the family worked each month as a whole, a more detailed monthly count for each member of the family, and a 2020-2021 comparison to put the numbers in perspective.
OTHERS
As stated at the beginning of this post, we are adding more royals to our count this year starting with Queen Maxima and Queen Mathilde. We do not have 2020 data for them so we can not provide a comparison between their work rate in 2020 and in 2021. However, in the overview below, you can see their monthly days worked. Queen Maxima had 108 days worked in 2021 while Queen Mathilde had 90.
Note: While Queen Maxima and Queen Mathilde are in the same section in this post, it is for layout purposes and not necessarily for comparison purposes.
Other new royals included in this count are the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Countess of Wessex. As a reminder, we are counting days worked and not the number of engagements so the numbers in the overview below will be different than the numbers you might have seen elsewhere.
It appears the Duke of Cambridge worked 104 days in 2021, while the Duchess of Cambridge had 69 days worked, and the Countess of Wessex had 81. You can see a monthly detail as well as a 2020-2021 comparison of their days worked below.
To conclude this post, we thought it would be interesting to compare the days worked by the members of the royal families based on their role in the “family business”. As you can see below, we were able to establish a comparison between the number of days worked by Queen Margrethe, the Norwegian royal couple, the Swedish royal couple, and the Spanish royal couple from 2017 to 2021.
We can also provide a comparison from 2017 to 2021 of the number of days worked by the Danish Crown Prince couple, the Norwegian Crown Prince couple, and the Swedish Crown Princess couple.
Did any of these numbers surprise you? Leave a comment and let us know!
If you would like to use these numbers for your own article - please make sure to credit us and link back to our original post. If you have any questions or want more information about the data posted here, send us an email.
