When I get home, matters won’t improve. I anticipate a long struggle with my 2-year-old son to undress him for bed. John is a chunky kid with a strong allergy to authority. He refuses to undress. We fight over every inch of every stitch of clothing. He kicks, grabs my glasses and screams, “NO, DADDEE.” The undressing usually takes 20 minutes and leaves me exhausted.
Just about everyone (it seems) feels stressed and strained. Count me in. But feelings aren’t facts, and we shouldn’t confuse the two. Are we really losing leisure? Yes, says Harvard economist Juliet Schor in a widely publicized new book “The Overworked American.” Compared with the late 1960s, the average worker now puts in about a month’s more time on the job (163 hours to be exact) every year, she contends. I simply don’t believe her.
Hers is mostly a case of mistaken identity. What’s causing the sense of time squeeze-and a lot of other turmoil as well-is the huge influx of women into the work force. In 1950, 34 percent of women had jobs; today, it’s 57 percent. Life has become more complicated. Families do feel torn by different demands. Men and women are sliding into unaccustomed roles. But this upheaval is distinct from what Schor claims has happened: that workers are being forced to spend more time at their jobs and, in the process, sacrificing precious leisure time.
Superficially, this seems plausible. Schor’s argument is that companies have reacted to growing competitive pressures by demanding more time from their workers. People put in more overtime (it’s often cheaper for firms to pay overtime than hire new workers with expensive fringe benefits). Vacations and paid holidays have been cut. Sounds sensible.
But the supporting evidence isn’t there. Virtually all of the increase in work time-even by Schor’s calculations, which subtly modify the basic statistics–occurs among women. This has little to do with the pressure from employers (if it did, similar increases would occur among men) and everything to do with women’s assimilation into the labor market on terms increasingly comparable with men’s. Women have gone into more occupations, are moving up career ladders and spend more time on the job.
Just about everyone feels oppressed by work at times. Some companies (or bosses) routinely demand long hours–often unreasonably so. In the 1980s, pressures may have increased. But Schor requires us to believe that matters have dramatically worsened. Not so.
In 1969, the average work week for men was 42.5 hours, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1991, it was 42 hours. Nor does there seem to have been any major drop in paid time off (mainly vacations and holidays). Among firms with more than 100 workers, vacation time has risen slightly since 1980 for workers with up to 15 years of service and decreased slightly for those with 20 years or more. The number of paid holidays has slipped a bit, from 10.1 days in 1980 to 9.2 days in 1989.
Leisure for all Americans has risen, because people retire earlier and live longer. In 1950, 87 percent of men between 55 and 64 worked; that dropped to 83 percent in 1970 and 67 percent in 1991. No one, including Schor, denies this rise in leisure. The main dispute involves two-earner couples with children. What’s happened to their leisure? Frankly, it’s hard to tell. Some time-use surveys contradict Schor’s conclusions. These studies ask people in great detail about their activities in a single day.
A study by Thomas Juster and Frank Stafford at the University of Michigan suggests that everyone’s leisure has risen. Between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, they find that women’s average weekly housework decreased (from 42 to 31 hours) while their time at jobs increased (from 19 to 24 hours). The gain in weekly leisure was about six hours. Men’s housework increased (from 12 to 14 hours), while their time at jobs dropped (from 51 to 44 hours). The gain is five hours. Unfortunately, this survey might be misleading because it includes retirees and the unemployed. Schor (who has tried to correct the data for these shortcomings) contends that workers have lost about three hours a week of leisure. But another time-use study by John Robinson of the University of Maryland, comparing 1985 and 1965, finds that leisure has risen.
I’m not sure the debate over statistics matters much. With children, what counts is not only how much time you’ve got but also when you’ve got it. Two-earner couples with children are obviously squeezed, because they’re supposed to be in too many places at the same time. But the conflicts are not only conflicts of time but also of careers and values. Companies and families are trying to come to terms with the tensions. An extra half an hour a day would be glorious. However, it would not relieve the underlying stress of trying to serve so many masters simultaneously.
Schor admires Europe’s more relaxed lifestyles, where long vacations are often mandated (5 weeks in Sweden, 4 weeks in Belgium). She thinks we should be more addicted to leisure and less to consumption. Maybe she’s right, but her preferences are-for better or worse-fundamentally un-American. Ours has always been a hurried society, brimming (perhaps excessively) with ambition. We crowd more things into already-crowded schedules. We are uneasy with ease. The constant quest for achievement and self-fulfillment can be exhausting and frustrating.
It may be a curse, but it’s our culture. The resulting discontents haven’t changed much since Alexis de Tocqueville first noted them in the 1830s. Americans (he wrote) “are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish ardor [they] pursue their own welfare, and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it.”
title: “Overworked Americans " ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “Eli Capriotti”
When I get home, matters won’t improve. I anticipate a long struggle with my 2-year-old son to undress him for bed. John is a chunky kid with a strong allergy to authority. He refuses to undress. We fight over every inch of every stitch of clothing. He kicks, grabs my glasses and screams, “NO, DADDEE.” The undressing usually takes 20 minutes and leaves me exhausted.
Just about everyone (it seems) feels stressed and strained. Count me in. But feelings aren’t facts, and we shouldn’t confuse the two. Are we really losing leisure? Yes, says Harvard economist Juliet Schor in a widely publicized new book “The Overworked American.” Compared with the late 1960s, the average worker now puts in about a month’s more time on the job (163 hours to be exact) every year, she contends. I simply don’t believe her.
Hers is mostly a case of mistaken identity. What’s causing the sense of time squeeze-and a lot of other turmoil as well-is the huge influx of women into the work force. In 1950, 34 percent of women had jobs; today, it’s 57 percent. Life has become more complicated. Families do feel torn by different demands. Men and women are sliding into unaccustomed roles. But this upheaval is distinct from what Schor claims has happened: that workers are being forced to spend more time at their jobs and, in the process, sacrificing precious leisure time.
Superficially, this seems plausible. Schor’s argument is that companies have reacted to growing competitive pressures by demanding more time from their workers. People put in more overtime (it’s often cheaper for firms to pay overtime than hire new workers with expensive fringe benefits). Vacations and paid holidays have been cut. Sounds sensible.
But the supporting evidence isn’t there. Virtually all of the increase in work time-even by Schor’s calculations, which subtly modify the basic statistics–occurs among women. This has little to do with the pressure from employers (if it did, similar increases would occur among men) and everything to do with women’s assimilation into the labor market on terms increasingly comparable with men’s. Women have gone into more occupations, are moving up career ladders and spend more time on the job.
Just about everyone feels oppressed by work at times. Some companies (or bosses) routinely demand long hours–often unreasonably so. In the 1980s, pressures may have increased. But Schor requires us to believe that matters have dramatically worsened. Not so.
In 1969, the average work week for men was 42.5 hours, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1991, it was 42 hours. Nor does there seem to have been any major drop in paid time off (mainly vacations and holidays). Among firms with more than 100 workers, vacation time has risen slightly since 1980 for workers with up to 15 years of service and decreased slightly for those with 20 years or more. The number of paid holidays has slipped a bit, from 10.1 days in 1980 to 9.2 days in 1989.
Leisure for all Americans has risen, because people retire earlier and live longer. In 1950, 87 percent of men between 55 and 64 worked; that dropped to 83 percent in 1970 and 67 percent in 1991. No one, including Schor, denies this rise in leisure. The main dispute involves two-earner couples with children. What’s happened to their leisure? Frankly, it’s hard to tell. Some time-use surveys contradict Schor’s conclusions. These studies ask people in great detail about their activities in a single day.
A study by Thomas Juster and Frank Stafford at the University of Michigan suggests that everyone’s leisure has risen. Between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, they find that women’s average weekly housework decreased (from 42 to 31 hours) while their time at jobs increased (from 19 to 24 hours). The gain in weekly leisure was about six hours. Men’s housework increased (from 12 to 14 hours), while their time at jobs dropped (from 51 to 44 hours). The gain is five hours. Unfortunately, this survey might be misleading because it includes retirees and the unemployed. Schor (who has tried to correct the data for these shortcomings) contends that workers have lost about three hours a week of leisure. But another time-use study by John Robinson of the University of Maryland, comparing 1985 and 1965, finds that leisure has risen.
I’m not sure the debate over statistics matters much. With children, what counts is not only how much time you’ve got but also when you’ve got it. Two-earner couples with children are obviously squeezed, because they’re supposed to be in too many places at the same time. But the conflicts are not only conflicts of time but also of careers and values. Companies and families are trying to come to terms with the tensions. An extra half an hour a day would be glorious. However, it would not relieve the underlying stress of trying to serve so many masters simultaneously.
Schor admires Europe’s more relaxed lifestyles, where long vacations are often mandated (5 weeks in Sweden, 4 weeks in Belgium). She thinks we should be more addicted to leisure and less to consumption. Maybe she’s right, but her preferences are-for better or worse-fundamentally un-American. Ours has always been a hurried society, brimming (perhaps excessively) with ambition. We crowd more things into already-crowded schedules. We are uneasy with ease. The constant quest for achievement and self-fulfillment can be exhausting and frustrating.
It may be a curse, but it’s our culture. The resulting discontents haven’t changed much since Alexis de Tocqueville first noted them in the 1830s. Americans (he wrote) “are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish ardor [they] pursue their own welfare, and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it.”
