And so we have productivity gains, but they literally
are killing us.
The productivity gains are per hour worked. The total output gains would include hours worked.
I would not say that 38 hours extra a year is killing us esp. because it is still a lot less hours then in 1920, 30, 40, 50 and less the 1960, 1970, or 1980.
Also other data show a decrease in average hours worked, but even if it has increased recently its a blip in the long term down trend. We might (or might not) be working longer hours in a regular work week but not a lot more, and we take more vaction time. Also we start work later on the average and have more years after retirement.
Tim
______________________
Average Weekly Hours
Monthly Labor Review July 2000
Katie Kirkland
On the decline in average weekly hours worked
The decline in the workweek in private industry
as measured by the Current Employment Statistics survey
can be attributed to the combination of disproportionate employment growth
and low and declining hours in retail trade Katie Kirkland is an economist in the Office of
Employment and Unemployment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How many hours per week do workers in the United States spend at their
paying jobs? The answer can be found by examining two principal BLS
surveys used totrack the number of hours that Americans work
per week. The Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that there has been
little change in average weekly hours worked; from 1964 to 1999,
there was a decline of 0.5 percent in the averageweekly hours at work in
nonagricultural industries. This statistic contrasts information on the
average workweek from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program,
otherwise known as the "establishment survey" or the "payroll survey."
Here, data show a long-term downwardtrend in the average length of the workweek.
From 1964 to 1999, average weekly hours fell by a substantial 11 percent,
from 38.7 to 34.5 hours, based on annual averages of monthly data
216.239.57.100
"Additional free time comes from the confluence of several trends. Americans are starting work later in life. On average, the age of initial employment has been pushed back seven months in the past 20 years. Once at work, Americans are putting in fewer hours because of shorter weeks, more holidays, and longer vacations. In the past two decades, there's been a gain of the equivalent of 23 days off a year. At home, Americans on average are devoting 18 minutes less a day to chores. Over the course of a year, that adds up to an extra four days of leisure. Toward the end of life, Americans are retiring earlier and living longer. As a result, a typical retirement grew by four years since 1973.
When it's all added up, the results are mind-boggling: Workers have added the equivalent of nearly five years of waking leisure to their lives since 1973. The typical employee spends less than a third of all non-sleeping hours on the job that's better than any generation in U.S. history.
There's indirect confirmation that Americans have more free time these days: We're participating in more recreational activities and spending more money on leisure activities. Ownership rates more than doubled for vacation homes and rose 50 percent for recreational boats. Pleasure trips per capita rose from 1.5 a year in 1980 to 1.8 in 1991. Americans took 4.4 million cruises in 1994, compared with 500,000 in 1970 and 1.4 million as recently as 1980.
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