The American Dream?

by Britt Gordon-McKeon

A few decades ago, all signs pointed to declining work hours for Americans, with no end in sight. Starting at 60 to 70 hours in the 1800s, the average workweek fell to around 40 during the Great Depression and after World War II, largely due to a strong union focus on a shorter workweek; a bill to shorten the workweek to 30 hours even passed the Senate in 1933, before the 40-hour level was agreed to later in the decade. And in the 50s and 60s, as technology continued to develop and mechanization increased, it became clear that the amount of labor needed to accomplish the current level of production was shrinking steadily. It seemed inevitable that the workload of Americans would dwindle. In 1965, a U.S. Senate subcommittee predicted that by 2000 the workweek would be 14 hours long.

Instead, Americans are now among the longest-working in the world. As productivity has increased around the world, other nations have used the opportunity to decrease work hours and increase leisure. France has a 35-hour workweek. Italians average eight weeks of vacation annually. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, countries like France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, and South Korea have seen a decrease of over 200 work hours annually since 1970. Yet in the U.S., yearly work hours have increased 10 to 20 percent during the same time period.

When we're overworked, our lives suffer in ways large and small. Even for those lucky enough to have jobs they find rewarding and enjoyable, long hours without respite have consequences, from lack of quality time with family and friends, to scarcer opportunities for the leisure activities that excite and sustain us, to health problems as serious as depression, heart attack, or stroke. Overwork not only decreases our free time, but depresses the quality of the time we do have – think collapsing exhaustedly in front of the television. And it affects our work performance, too; studies show that the longer the workday, the lower productivity each hour.

The amount of time we devote to work has a tremendous impact on our quality of life. Yet, for the most part, we have very little control or flexibility in this area due to the way work is structured in America.

For employers, it is beneficial to squeeze as much work possible out of employees who get paid a set salary and costly benefits such as health insurance. On the other hand, many part-time, low-wage employees work for employers who reserve benefits for full-time workers, and attempt to keep as many of their employees as possible below that threshold. Thus, many workers struggle to be assigned 40 or even 30 hours per week; some live with the stresses of financial difficulties, while others create a patchwork of multiple part-time jobs that leaves them as overworked as salaried professionals if not more so. A recent survey found that 38% of Americans work 50 hours a week or more.

But overwork is not merely a matter of hourly workload. In Europe, vacations are commonly much longer than in the United States. Most European countries mandate four or five weeks of vacation for all employees with a year of seniority. Germans average seven weeks of vacation, the French 37 days, and Italians 42 days. Even the notoriously hard-working Japanese, who have invented a word for death by overwork (karoshi), receive an average of 25 days paid vacation each year. Americans average 12 days, and recent surveys suggest that we let an average of two of them go unused. Twenty-eight percent of working women and 37% of women earning less than $40,000 have no paid vacation at all.

Clearly there are structural changes that can significantly improve the situation: shifting the responsibility for benefits like health insurance from employers to the public at large to ease at least some of the pressures towards long days or short weeks; expanding overtime rules to cover salaried professionals; measures like the European Union's mandatory vacation law, which requires employers in EU countries to provide a minimum of four weeks paid vacation; raising the minimum wage so that low-wage workers can afford to live on 40 hours pay or less.

Yet while these strategies are important, they are only a piece of the solution because overwork is ingrained in our culture. Laws may be passed to limit the workweek or increase paid vacation, but while the dedication and commitment of employees is measured by hours worked, they will hesitate to leave their desks at 5 p.m. or take all their vacation days at the risk of their careers.

And what's more, though polls find that Americans would prefer to work an average of 10 fewer hours a week, questions that dig deeper show most people are willing to give up little or none of their income in exchange for those shorter hours. For some, this income is needed for basic necessities, but for many others it is merely a matter of achieving a certain level of consumption. Often, it almost goes without saying that income and consumption should be maximized, and leisure time is first to be sacrificed.

If American society is ever to allow people true freedom to choose the work-life balance that most suits them, the process must include structural changes, collective action, and personal choices. In individual workplaces, employees can build strong unions that demand not only increased paid vacation but also freedom of work hours and non-discrimination against employees who exercise that freedom. But we must also make changes on a personal level by rethinking our priorities and envisioning lifestyles in which we can work less, spend less, and enjoy life more. Not only will this enrich our own lives, but it is one piece of building a culture that values relaxation, rejuvenation, and human relationships over maximizing income and consumption.