7 ms·

How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?

43 points by hawkharris 13y ago

rm999 13y ago
Great article, it's nice to see someone take a simple statistic that may tell a misleading story and dig deeply into its causes. Macroeconomics is a complex topic that generally deserves rigorous analysis. The article mostly looks at gender and class, I wonder how immigration has affected the shifts.
- cynicalkane 13y ago
  This is mostly microeconomics stuff, but for a national economy. Macro is when the scale of a market causes it to obey different rules, sort of how quantum mechanics is fundamentally different from classical but quantum particles still obey classical laws in some situations. Micro is a lot easier to work with because you can study it empirically, since experiments and data can be assumed to scale up; it's subject to the "rigorous analysis" you talk about.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Did anyone notice this little chart? http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-31%20at%204.40.28%20PM.png http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Screen%... Take a look at the one group that has lost leisure time.
- TheCoelacanth 13y ago
  So, for anyone with a Bachelor's or higher, leisure time has plummeted. For everyone else, the increase in "leisure time" is likely because of underemployment, so they would actually prefer to be working more to earn more money.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    That seems somewhat unlikely? There are 168 hours in a week, or 128 hours of time outside the 40 hour workweek. Even those without a high school diploma have 113 hours of leisure per this graph- so I don't think we can immediately conclude they just don't have work. Also, this chart is from 1965 to 2005, so more recent trends will only be in a tiny corner of this graph.
    - gregpilling 13y ago
      So if a normal work week is counted at 40 hours, and there are 99 hours of leisure according to that chart for a modern man with a degree, then it works out that the average person on that plot line is now working 168 - 99 = 69 hours on average or 69 / 40 = 172.5% of a normal week. Sounds unbalanced to me. Juliet Schor has an excellent book on this subject The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure http://www.amazon.com/Overworked-American-Unexpected-Decline-Leisure/dp/046505434X http://www.amazon.com/Overworked-American-Unexpected-Decline...
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Right, the average working man works more than 40 hours a week because per the article, this chart counts things like housework as work.
dvanduzer 13y ago
I came to a screeching halt when I read "The Great Workweek Shift" chart. I can't think of a more misleading way to present that kind of data. Then "The Growth of Leisure Time for Men" chart is silent on whether the men with fewer than 12 years of education would prefer to swap this extra "leisure" time for paid work. In the last paragraph he refers to this as "downtime" instead. Very little source data cited. Clever unit shifting on most of the graphs. Generally strange mixed messaging.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Yeah I think this is the first time I have seen "chronic unemployment" called "leisure time" but I guess technically it's correct.
  - gohrt 13y ago
    Technically unemployment is time spent looking for work. People not looking for work are excluded. Naturally, such a distinction is difficult to do accurately.
refurb 13y ago
This article provides a great example of why you can't ignore demographic shifts when analyzing statistical data across time periods. The best example of this is household income. If you look at the data, it looks like household income has been flat since the 1980s. However, during that time, there has been a large shift of two-parent (where both parents worked) to single-parent households. In fact, if you look at the individual incomes, they have grown substantially over the same time period. It's only when you obscure the data by talking about "households" do you see the lack of income growth.
- dvanduzer 13y ago
  This article and your comment are both great examples of how easy it is to tell the story you want to hear with data. Your point about households vs individuals is clever, because it ignores how the distribution of individual income growth across any other demographic factors.
  - refurb 13y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your comment. Of course income is distributed differently across different demographics. My point is just that you need to be care drawing conclusions from the data presented. Unless you control for other variables, you may draw erroneous conclusions.
    - dvanduzer 13y ago
      The demographic analysis I'm referring to is income growth over time by income level.
      - refurb 13y ago
        Have you seen the income growth data by age group? Again, if you treat all income earners equally, the data looks terrible. This is because your age has a huge impact on your income. Most people see large income increases once they are past their late 30s/early 40s. One big demographic shift to keep an eye on is the retirement of the baby boomers. Right now, they are in the highest income earning period of their lives. As soon as they retire, their income drops substantially and they are replaced by fewer and fewer individuals from lower age brackets. I would imagine that overall per capita income will continue on a downward trend until after all the baby boomers retire, even though on an individual level, people are seeing increases in income level.
thekevan 13y ago
If someone asked me that, my answer would be, "when you let it."
evanlivingston 13y ago
Bertrand Russell does a good job picking apart why we use innovation to make ourselves work harder rather than life easier. http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
- shaydoc 13y ago
  That is seriously good reading
benjohnson 13y ago
In my opinion: Our work-like balance got awful when we became greedy. I'm not nearly 50% as smart as the HN demi-gods around here, but I've learned to tame my desires. I live in a humble house and have shitty possessions - but I only have to work 20 hours a week to keep the lights on. In my opinion, you have to learn to make hard choices with an eye for the long term. Here's an example: For us, we decided that sending our three children to a good Lutheran school was important Our observation was that it was wiser to educate our children in knowledge, but also values and heart. We anticipate that at 18 years of age, they'll be functioning adults and we won't have to prop them up into their 20's.
- sigkill 13y ago
  The one thing I've learnt is that it's hardest to learn to be content. With the rampant consumer culture and rat race, it's quite hard actually to step out of the 'box' and ask yourself "What the hell am I doing this for, at the end of the day?". To give another analogy, if there are various achievements and rewards for getting good times and scores on super meat boy, it'd be quite hard to stop trying to beat your friends and the top scores list to ask yourself why you're playing SMB in the first place when instead you could just sit down and relax without the worries and tension of the game.
- vpeters25 13y ago
  It's also about perspective. If you have to wake up every morning at 5:15 am to catch a 1.5 hr bus ride, arrive at work at 8 am, work for 9 hrs until 6 pm (1 hr lunch in between). Then catch another 1.5 hr ride back home. Arrive after 8pm, eat something, go sleep. Now rinse and repeat, every week day for 9 years. Does this even qualify as a balanced work-life? Compare that to wake up at 8 am, have coffee, read hackernews, shower, arrive at work at 9 am, work through 5 pm, arrive back home at 5:30, 5 hrs for dinner, leisure, sports, go gym, play with kids, etc, go sleep. Edit: the top example is my brother's typical workday in Chile, bottom one is mine here in the US.
  - miloshadzic 13y ago
    I was sure that the first was typical for a US worker.
davidw 13y ago
Starting with agriculture, when we gave up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, according to some people.
vpeters25 13y ago
I think something is seriously wrong with this work-life balance index (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance) when the US ranks only slightly higher than Chile. There is no way a country such as Chile, where the legal work-week is 45 hrs and the average commute takes at least 1hr can be ranked so high.
tsotha 13y ago
When did work-life balance get so awful? Probably right around the time agriculture was invented.
pmarca 13y ago
I think the title has a typo. Should be "How Did Work-Life Balance in the US Get So Awesome?"
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
zwieback 13y ago
Another question we have to ask is: "how much leisure time do we want?" It's fair to judge a reduction in work hours as a good thing when most work is hard manual labor. I doubt that's true for the majority of jobs any more. I think everyone should have enough leisure time to be healthy and spend time with their family or friends. However, I don't think we should be comparing ourselves to Europe where decades of structural unemployment have led to low-quality leisure time for large swaths of the population?
- come2gether 13y ago
  low quality leisure time? how is this defined?
  - zwieback 13y ago
    Time off from work without anything to do and no money. I know, not something that would happen to me but for a lot of people time off is spent in front of the TV waiting for work to start up again.
mwetzler 13y ago
The misogyny in the article's comments section is shocking and depressing.
FellowTraveler 13y ago
three words: the income tax.

43 points by hawkharris 13y ago

rm999 13y ago

Great article, it's nice to see someone take a simple statistic that may tell a misleading story and dig deeply into its causes. Macroeconomics is a complex topic that generally deserves rigorous analysis. The article mostly looks at gender and class, I wonder how immigration has affected the shifts.

cynicalkane 13y ago
This is mostly microeconomics stuff, but for a national economy. Macro is when the scale of a market causes it to obey different rules, sort of how quantum mechanics is fundamentally different from classical but quantum particles still obey classical laws in some situations. Micro is a lot easier to work with because you can study it empirically, since experiments and data can be assumed to scale up; it's subject to the "rigorous analysis" you talk about.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Did anyone notice this little chart? http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-31%20at%204.40.28%20PM.png http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Screen%... Take a look at the one group that has lost leisure time.

TheCoelacanth 13y ago
So, for anyone with a Bachelor's or higher, leisure time has plummeted. For everyone else, the increase in "leisure time" is likely because of underemployment, so they would actually prefer to be working more to earn more money.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That seems somewhat unlikely? There are 168 hours in a week, or 128 hours of time outside the 40 hour workweek. Even those without a high school diploma have 113 hours of leisure per this graph- so I don't think we can immediately conclude they just don't have work. Also, this chart is from 1965 to 2005, so more recent trends will only be in a tiny corner of this graph.
  - gregpilling 13y ago
    So if a normal work week is counted at 40 hours, and there are 99 hours of leisure according to that chart for a modern man with a degree, then it works out that the average person on that plot line is now working 168 - 99 = 69 hours on average or 69 / 40 = 172.5% of a normal week. Sounds unbalanced to me. Juliet Schor has an excellent book on this subject The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure http://www.amazon.com/Overworked-American-Unexpected-Decline-Leisure/dp/046505434X http://www.amazon.com/Overworked-American-Unexpected-Decline...
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Right, the average working man works more than 40 hours a week because per the article, this chart counts things like housework as work.

dvanduzer 13y ago

I came to a screeching halt when I read "The Great Workweek Shift" chart. I can't think of a more misleading way to present that kind of data. Then "The Growth of Leisure Time for Men" chart is silent on whether the men with fewer than 12 years of education would prefer to swap this extra "leisure" time for paid work. In the last paragraph he refers to this as "downtime" instead. Very little source data cited. Clever unit shifting on most of the graphs. Generally strange mixed messaging.

ams6110 13y ago
Yeah I think this is the first time I have seen "chronic unemployment" called "leisure time" but I guess technically it's correct.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Technically unemployment is time spent looking for work. People not looking for work are excluded. Naturally, such a distinction is difficult to do accurately.

refurb 13y ago

This article provides a great example of why you can't ignore demographic shifts when analyzing statistical data across time periods. The best example of this is household income. If you look at the data, it looks like household income has been flat since the 1980s. However, during that time, there has been a large shift of two-parent (where both parents worked) to single-parent households. In fact, if you look at the individual incomes, they have grown substantially over the same time period. It's only when you obscure the data by talking about "households" do you see the lack of income growth.

dvanduzer 13y ago
This article and your comment are both great examples of how easy it is to tell the story you want to hear with data. Your point about households vs individuals is clever, because it ignores how the distribution of individual income growth across any other demographic factors.
- refurb 13y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your comment. Of course income is distributed differently across different demographics. My point is just that you need to be care drawing conclusions from the data presented. Unless you control for other variables, you may draw erroneous conclusions.
  - dvanduzer 13y ago
    The demographic analysis I'm referring to is income growth over time by income level.
    - refurb 13y ago
      Have you seen the income growth data by age group? Again, if you treat all income earners equally, the data looks terrible. This is because your age has a huge impact on your income. Most people see large income increases once they are past their late 30s/early 40s. One big demographic shift to keep an eye on is the retirement of the baby boomers. Right now, they are in the highest income earning period of their lives. As soon as they retire, their income drops substantially and they are replaced by fewer and fewer individuals from lower age brackets. I would imagine that overall per capita income will continue on a downward trend until after all the baby boomers retire, even though on an individual level, people are seeing increases in income level.

thekevan 13y ago

If someone asked me that, my answer would be, "when you let it."

evanlivingston 13y ago

Bertrand Russell does a good job picking apart why we use innovation to make ourselves work harder rather than life easier. http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

shaydoc 13y ago
That is seriously good reading

benjohnson 13y ago

In my opinion: Our work-like balance got awful when we became greedy. I'm not nearly 50% as smart as the HN demi-gods around here, but I've learned to tame my desires. I live in a humble house and have shitty possessions - but I only have to work 20 hours a week to keep the lights on. In my opinion, you have to learn to make hard choices with an eye for the long term. Here's an example: For us, we decided that sending our three children to a good Lutheran school was important Our observation was that it was wiser to educate our children in knowledge, but also values and heart. We anticipate that at 18 years of age, they'll be functioning adults and we won't have to prop them up into their 20's.

sigkill 13y ago
The one thing I've learnt is that it's hardest to learn to be content. With the rampant consumer culture and rat race, it's quite hard actually to step out of the 'box' and ask yourself "What the hell am I doing this for, at the end of the day?". To give another analogy, if there are various achievements and rewards for getting good times and scores on super meat boy, it'd be quite hard to stop trying to beat your friends and the top scores list to ask yourself why you're playing SMB in the first place when instead you could just sit down and relax without the worries and tension of the game.
vpeters25 13y ago
It's also about perspective. If you have to wake up every morning at 5:15 am to catch a 1.5 hr bus ride, arrive at work at 8 am, work for 9 hrs until 6 pm (1 hr lunch in between). Then catch another 1.5 hr ride back home. Arrive after 8pm, eat something, go sleep. Now rinse and repeat, every week day for 9 years. Does this even qualify as a balanced work-life? Compare that to wake up at 8 am, have coffee, read hackernews, shower, arrive at work at 9 am, work through 5 pm, arrive back home at 5:30, 5 hrs for dinner, leisure, sports, go gym, play with kids, etc, go sleep. Edit: the top example is my brother's typical workday in Chile, bottom one is mine here in the US.
- miloshadzic 13y ago
  I was sure that the first was typical for a US worker.

davidw 13y ago

Starting with agriculture, when we gave up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, according to some people.

vpeters25 13y ago

I think something is seriously wrong with this work-life balance index (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance) when the US ranks only slightly higher than Chile. There is no way a country such as Chile, where the legal work-week is 45 hrs and the average commute takes at least 1hr can be ranked so high.

tsotha 13y ago

When did work-life balance get so awful? Probably right around the time agriculture was invented.

pmarca 13y ago

I think the title has a typo. Should be "How Did Work-Life Balance in the US Get So Awesome?"

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

zwieback 13y ago

Another question we have to ask is: "how much leisure time do we want?" It's fair to judge a reduction in work hours as a good thing when most work is hard manual labor. I doubt that's true for the majority of jobs any more. I think everyone should have enough leisure time to be healthy and spend time with their family or friends. However, I don't think we should be comparing ourselves to Europe where decades of structural unemployment have led to low-quality leisure time for large swaths of the population?

come2gether 13y ago
low quality leisure time? how is this defined?
- zwieback 13y ago
  Time off from work without anything to do and no money. I know, not something that would happen to me but for a lot of people time off is spent in front of the TV waiting for work to start up again.

mwetzler 13y ago

The misogyny in the article's comments section is shocking and depressing.

FellowTraveler 13y ago

three words: the income tax.