[lbo-talk] Nostalgia, was anti-communism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 24 06:42:11 PDT 2005


James Heartfield wrote:


>OECD statistics are that annual hours worked per American employee
>have fallen from 2,033 hrs in 1960 to 1,817 hrs in 2003.
>http://www.ggdc.net/dseries/Data/hours/OECDH05I.xls

But a much larger share of the pop is working - about 63% today, vs. 56% in 1960. The BLS's aggregate hours series begins in 1964. Taking aggregate hours and dividing it by pop, there's been an increase of about 29% in hours worked per capita since 1964 - and that's only private-sector workers. The BLS doesn't report hours for public sector workers, but public sector employment is up more than twice as much as the pop over the same period. If we assume no change in the public sector workweek, hours per cap are up 47%.

Doug



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