As we know, the explosion of casual and part-time employment has forced more workers to hold multiple jobs.
Is this accounted for in the determination of the length of the work week?
In the old days, the typical factory hand worked a regular 8 hour shift, five days a week. An average 40 hour work week could be said to reflect the norm.
But what of the worker who now works a 6 hour shift at Walmart and then moonlights as a bartender for another 4 hours?
Do the BLS stats reflect household or payroll data?
If the latter, wouldn't the agency then have two data sets for the same individual - showing in one case an average five day work week of 30 hours drawn on his/her Walmart time card and an average work week of 20 hours from his/her bar job? Wouldn't this exert a misleading downward bias on average weekly hours worked, and explain why people think statistics showing no appreciable increase in the work week contradicts their own experience?
Or do the official stats adjust for this?