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If you look at the actual data, average hours worked has gone down steadily in the US over the past 200 years: > 1830 69.1 hours per week > 1880 60.7 > 192
by ghostcluster 7y ago
If you look at the actual data, average hours worked has gone down steadily in the US over the past 200 years:
> 1830 69.1 hours per week
> 1880 60.7
> 1929 50.6
> 1988 42.4
> As the twentieth century ended there was nothing resembling a shorter hours “movement.” The length of the workweek continues to fall for most groups — but at a glacial pace. Some Americans complain about a lack of free time but the vast majority seem content with an average workweek of roughly forty hours — channeling almost all of their growing wages into higher incomes rather than increased leisure time.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
In my own estimation, spending time with friends may be less emphasized in the current era due to the increased role of social media and the personal atomization it unintentionally prmootes.
- nickthemagicman 7y agoYeah but for what quality of life? Wages haven't increased while inflation has gone up. So just fundamentally this means that the amount of work to maintain the same standard of living has increased. So this statement/study is missing one or more variables.
- fourseventy 7y agoI'm pretty sure the standard of living in 2019 is higher than in 1830
- war1025 7y agoI am never sure how to take these "standard of living" claims. In many ways, the world we live in today is nothing like the one that existed 50/60 years ago.
- akavi 7y ago> wages haven't increased while inflation has gone up ...That's not true, at all? Adjusted for inflation, wages have at worst been flat for certain sectors. The vast majority of people have seen inflation adjused wage increases.
- dpc_pw 7y agoThe official inflation numbers are useless. Cost of goods is flat, sure (after you include the hedonistic adjustment gimmick), but cost of other's people time has skyrocketed (daycare, teachers, doctors, waiter, plubmer etc.)
- andrekandre 7y agoi’m curious to see how it’s changed after 1988... any info about that?
- sp332 7y agoIn 2018 the average excluding agricultural workers was 38.9 hours per week. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat22.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat22.htm
- andrekandre 7y agothanks! btw, i didn’t know that: > Full time is 35 hours or more per week; part time is less than 35 hours. thats just barely above 4 days @ 8hrs... interesting...