Steve
NY Times September 5, 1999
Running on Empty: So Much Work, So Little Time
______________________________________________________________
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
T he much-acclaimed economic expansion, now in its ninth year, has
blessed Americans with a cornucopia of good things -- rising
incomes, the lowest jobless rate in three decades and Wall Street
prices going through the roof. Many Americans have used the good
times to renovate their kitchens or take that trip to Tuscany, but
others are still finding the boom a lot less satisfying than might
be expected.
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For many Americans this Labor Day, the sentiment seems to be, we're
earning more, but enjoying it less.
The reason is simple: too much work. With the economy going like
gangbusters and with a labor shortage in much of the country, many
Americans are reluctantly clocking 60-hour weeks to do the
mountains of work that need to be done -- designing that Web page,
getting out that legal brief, finishing those architectural
renderings.
For many Americans, the 40-hour week has become a fond memory.
Juliet Schor, the Harvard professor who wrote the 1992 book "The
Overworked American" (Basic Books), said in an interview that if
she were to write a sequel it might be called "The Even More
Overworked American." Indeed, a new study by the International
Labor Organization found that the number of hours Americans work
each year has climbed skyward while working hours in most other
industrial countries are falling. This trend has given Americans
the dubious distinction of moving into first place in the number of
hours worked each year (1,966), surpassing even the Japanese by
about 70 hours. On average, Americans work 350 hours more per year
(that's almost nine full work weeks) than Europeans.
"There are a lot of things going on," said Professor Schor.
"Americans are working harder, which is common when the economy is
doing well. And a lot of today's jobs require longer hours:
management jobs, professionals working long hours at firms because
that's what it takes to succeed in these firms. Some people are
working harder because there's a lot of money to be made at the
moment. But for a lot of people, excessive working time is a major
problem."
This explosion in hours worked has some little-understood pros and
some well-known cons. On the positive side, it has helped keep the
United States at the head of the pack in productivity.
America's economy produces more value per worker per year than any
other nation's, enabling the United States to enjoy living
standards that make most of the world envious.
In a subtle way, the boom in working hours has also helped keep
inflation down. Millions of salaried Americans -- software
designers, lawyers, factory managers -- are clocking 50- , 60- and
70-hour work weeks even though on paper they officially work just
40 hours. These workers often do not put in for overtime pay, and
the result is that they are making a quiet, below-the-radar
contribution to the economy. If a Web site designer puts in a
70-hour week, but is officially working only 40 hours, that helps
raise the important gauge of productivity per hour. This,
economists say, has contributed to the recent rise in the nation's
productivity rate, up 2 percent last year from a sluggish 1 percent
per year over the previous two decades. This boost, also fueled by
heavy corporate investment in computers, has enabled American
industry to keep profits high without having to resort to raising
prices.
But talk to a few workers who just punched out after a 12-hour day,
and they'll tell you that 60-hour weeks have their downside as
well. Auto workers, telephone workers and others are howling about
too much overtime, with many workers being forced to put in 15 or
20 extra hours a week. In recent months, many labor negotiations
have grown heated over union demands to eliminate mandatory
overtime -- something many corporations are loath to do when the
4.2 percent jobless rate makes it hard to find new workers.
Little wonder that recent surveys show many Americans complaining
that they do not have enough time to spend with their families.
Professor Schor expressed surprise that in a recent poll more than
20 percent of Americans said they would happily accept lower
incomes in exchange for working fewer hours. Even as many
stressed-out workers are deliberately reducing their hours, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that 19 percent of Americans
report working more than 49 hours a week, up from 16 percent in
1985.
"A very significant group, roughly a third of the labor force, is
working more hours than they want," said Professor Schor. "They are
feeling high levels of time pressure and stress. They feel their
job interferes with their family life." She said stress is being
experienced in particular by baby boom workers.
_________________________________________________________________
A misty longing for the 40-hour week.
_________________________________________________________________
Probably the biggest reason for workers feeling overextended,
economists say, is that in many families the parents, taken
together, are working longer hours. The Economic Policy Institute,
a liberal research group, has found that together, parents in
middle-class families work 3,335 hours per year on average, up from
3,200 a decade ago and just over 3,000 hours two decades ago.
That's an increase of eight weeks of work per year since 1979. The
main reason for the surge, economists say, is not so much that men
are working longer hours, but that women are -- in large part to
keep family incomes climbing while hourly wages, after accounting
for inflation, have largely stagnated for the past 25 years.
Millions of women who used to work part time have moved into
full-time jobs.
"Much of the economic gains in the current economic recovery comes
from people working more hours, rather than higher hourly wages,"
said Lawrence Mishel, vice president of the Economic Policy
Institute.
The overtime boom has created another source of tensions. Many
corporate executives are unhappy about dishing out millions of
dollars each week in time-and-a-half pay for overtime. As a result
many companies are doing an end run around overtime laws by, for
example, hiring thousands of workers as independent contractors who
do not have to be paid time-and-a-half for every hour they work
over 40.
Sociologists and economists see several factors behind the longer
work week. The economy is shifting from manufacturing to services,
and service workers do not watch the clock the way manufacturing
workers do. Many companies, notably software makers, now emphasize
"project" work. Corporate culture demands completing projects by a
deadline, often requiring workers to put in 90-hour weeks to
finish, say, the latest CD-ROM.
Some economists question whether Americans are working more hours
per week, saying the statistics rely too much on workers' own
accounts. Many economists also say it has grown harder to measure
how many hours people work because of the explosion of beepers and
cell phones as well as computers and faxes at home.
"Nowadays you go to a social gathering and you see a lot of people
wearing beepers, and at a baseball game you see all these people
with their cell phones, in many cases still connected to work,"
said Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton University labor economist.
"It's gotten far more difficult to measure where work ends and
leisure begins."
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