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THE OVERWORKED AMERICAN
Juliet B. Schor
Juliet B. Schor (b. 1955) is a professor at Harvard University, where she is both Senior Lecturer on Economics and also Director of Women’s Studies. In her book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1991), she analyzes some surprising trends-historic, economic, and cultural-in the world of work, with a particular emphasis on the American worker. In the following excerpt from The Overworked American, Schor examines the shifting balance between work and leisure time, a phenomenon of late twentieth-century life that has produced increasing stress on the individual, the family, and society as a whole. Citing the constant increase in productivity since midcentury, she asks, “Why has leisure been such a conspicuous casualty of prosperity?” To answer the question she probes the values of our culture, examines consumer habits in our four-decade-long national spending spree, and critiques the economic ideals of American capitalism.
In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work. In any given year, such a small increment has probably been imperceptible. But the accumulated increase over two decades is substantial. When surveyed, Americans re port that they have only sixteen and a half hours of leisure a week, after the obligations of job and household are taken care of. Working hours are already longer than they were forty years ago. If present trends continue, by the end of the century Americans will be spending as much time at their jobs as they did back in the nineteen twenties.
The rise of worktime was unexpected. For nearly a hundred years, hours had been declining. When this decline abruptly ended in the late 1940s, it marked the beginning of a new era in worktime. But the change was barely noticed. Equally surprising, but also hardly recognized, has been the deviation from Western Europe. After progressing in tandem for nearly a century, the United States veered off into a trajectory of declining leisure, while in Europe work has been disappearing. Forty years later, the differences are large. U.S. manufacturing employees currently work 320 more hours—the equivalent of over two months—than their counterparts in West Germany or France.
The decline in Americans’ leisure time is in sharp contrast to the potential provided by the growth of productivity. Productivity measures the goods and services that result from each hour worked. When productivity rises, a worker can either produce the current output in less time, or remain at work the same number of hours and produce more. Every time productivity increases, we are presented with the possibility of either more free time or more money. That’s the productivity dividend.
Since 1948, productivity has failed to rise in only five years. The level of productivity of the U.S. worker has more than doubled. In other words, we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We actually could have chosen the four-hour day. Or a working year of six months. Or, every worker in the United Stares could now be taking every other year off from work-with pay. Incredible as it may sound, this is just the simple arithmetic of productivity growth in operation.But between 1948 and the present we did not use any of the productivity dividend to reduce hours. In the first two decades after 1948, productivity grew rapidly, at about 3 percent a year. During that period worktime did not fall appreciably. Annual hours per labor force participant fell only slightly. And on a per-capita (rather than a labor force) basis, they even rose a bit. Since then, productivity growth has been lower, but still positive, averaging just over 1 percent a year. Yet hours have risen steadily for two decades. In 1990, the average American owns and consumes more than twice as much as he or she did in 1948, but also has less free time.
How did this happen? Why has leisure been such a conspicuous casualty of prosperity? In part, the answer lies in the difference between the markets for consumer products and free time. Consider the former, the legendary American market. It is a veritable consumer’s paradise, offering a dazzling array of products varying in style, design, quality, price, and country of origin. The consumer is treated to GM versus Toyota, Kenmore versus GE, Sony, or Magnavox, the Apple versus the IBM. We’ve got Calvin Klein, Anne Klein, Liz Claiborne, and Levi-Strauss; McDonald’s, Burger King, and Colonel Sanders. Marketing experts and advertisers spend vast sums of money to make these choices appealing even irresistible. And they have been successful. In cross-country comparisons, Americans have been found to spend more time shop ping than anyone else. They also spend a higher fraction of the money they earn.” And with the explosion of consumer debt, many are now spending what they haven’t earned.
After four decades of this shopping spree, the American standard of living embodies a level of material comfort unprecedented in human history. The American home is more spacious and luxurious than the dwellings of any other nation. Food is cheap and abundant. The typical family owns a fantastic array of household and consumer appliances: we have machines to wash our clothes and dishes, mow our lawns, and blow away our snow. On a per person basis, yearly income is nearly $22,000 a year—or sixty-five times the average income of half the world’s population.
On the other hand, the “market” for free time hardly even exists in America. With few exceptions, employers (the sellers) don’t offer the chance to trade off income gains for a shorter work day or the occasional sabbatical. They just pass on income, in the form of annual pay raises or bonuses, or, if granting increased vacation or personal days, usually do so unilaterally. Employees rarely have the chance to exercise an actual choice about how they will spend their productivity dividend. The closest substitute for a “market in leisure” is the travel and other leisure industries that advertise products to occupy, our free time. But this indirect effect has been weak, as consumers crowd increasingly expensive leisure spending into smaller periods of time.
Contrary to the views of some researchers, the rise of work is not confined to a few, selective groups, but has affected the great majority of working Americans. Hours have risen for men as well as women, for those in the working class as well as professionals. They have grown for all marital statuses and income groups. The increase also spans a wide range of industries. Indeed, the shrinkage of leisure experienced by nearly all types of Americans has created a profound structural crisis of time.
While academics have missed the decline of leisure time, ordinary Americans have not. And the media provide mounting evidence of “time poverty,” overwork and a squeeze on time. Nationwide, people report their leisure time has declined by as much as one third since the early 1970s. Predictably, they are spending less time on the basics, like sleeping and eating. Parents are devoting less attention to their children. Stress is on the rise, partly owing to the “balancing act” of reconciling the demands of work and family life…
Most economists regard the spending spree that Americans indulged in throughout the postwar decades as an unambiguous blessing, on the assumption that more is always better. And there is a certain sense in this approach. It’s hard to imagine how having more of a desired good could make one worse off, especially since it is always possible to ignore the additional quantity. Relying on this little bit of common sense, economists have championed the closely related ideas that more goods yield more satisfaction, that desires are infinite, and that people act to satisfy those desires as fully as they can.Now anyone with just a little bit of psychological sophistication (to go with this little bit of common sense) can spot the flaw in the economist’s argument. Once our basic human needs are taken care of, the effect of consumption on well-being gets tricky. What if our desires keep pace with our incomes, so that getting richer doesn’t make us more satisfied? Or what if satisfaction depends, not on absolute levels of consumption, but on one’s level relative to others (such as the Joneses). Then no matter how much you possess, you won’t feel well off if Jones next door possesses more.How many of us thought the first car stereo a great luxury, and then, when it came time to buy a new car, considered it an absolute necessity? Or life before and after the microwave? And the fact that many of these commodities are bought on credit makes the cycle of income-consumption-more income-more consumption even more ominous. There is no doubt that some purchases permanently enhance our lives. But how much of what we consume merely keeps us moving on a stationary treadmill? The problem with the treadmill is not only that it is stationary, but also that we have to work long hours to stay on it. As I shall argue [later], the consumerist treadmill and long hour lobs have combined to form an insidious cycle of “work-and-spend.” Employers ask for long hours. The pay creates a high level of consumption. People buy houses and go into debt; luxuries become necessities; Smiths keep up with Joneses. Each year, “progress,” in the form of annual productivity in creases, is doled out by employers as extra income rather than as time off. Work-and-spend has become a powerful dynamic keeping us from a more relaxed and leisured way of life… However scarce academic research on the rising workload may be, what we do know suggests it has contributed to a variety of social problems. For example, work is implicated in the dramatic rise of “stress.” Thirty percent of adults say that they experience high stress nearly every day; even higher numbers report high stress once or twice a week. A third of the population says that they are rushed to do the things they have to do—up from a quarter in 1965. Stress-related diseases have exploded, especially among women, and jobs are a major factor. Workers’ compensation claims related to Stress tripled during just the first half of the 1980s. Other evidence also suggests a rise in the demands placed on employees on the job. According to a recent review of existing findings, Americans are literally working themselves to death—as jobs contribute to heart disease, hypertension, gastric problems, depression, exhaustion, and a variety of other ailments. Surprisingly, the high-powered jobs are not the most dangerous. The most stressful workplaces are the “electronic sweatshops” and assembly lines where a demanding pace is coupled with virtually no individual discretion.
Sleep has become another casualty of modern life. According to sleep researchers, studies point to a “sleep deficit” among Americans, a majority of whom are currently getting between 60 and 90 minutes less a night than they should for optimum health and performance. The number of people showing up at sleep disorder clinics with serious problems has skyrocketed in the last decade. Shiftwork, long working hours, the growth of a global economy (with its attendant continent-hopping and twenty-four-hour business culture), and the accelerating pace of life have all contributed to sleep deprivation. If you need an alarm clock, the experts warn, you’re probably sleeping too little.
The juggling act between job and family is another problem area. Half the population now says they have too little time for their families. The problem is particularly acute for women: in one study, half of all employed mothers reported it caused either “a lot” or an “extreme” level of stress. The same proportion feel that “when I’m at home I try to make up to my family for being away at work, and as a result I rarely have any time for myself.” This stress has placed tremendous burdens on marriages. Two-earner couples have less time together, which researchers have found reduces the happiness and satisfaction of a marriage. These couples often just don’t have enough time to talk to each other. And growing numbers of husbands and wives are like ships passing in the night, working sequential schedules to manage their child care. Among young parents, the prevalence of at least one partner working outside regular daytime hours is now close to one half. But this “solution” is hardly a happy one. According to one parent: “I work 11-7 to accommodate my family—to eliminate the need for babysitters. However, the stress on myself is tremendous.”
A decade of research by Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild suggests that many marriages where women are doing the “second shift” are close to the breaking point. When job, children, and marriage have to be attended to, it’s often the marriage that is neglected. The failure of many men to do their share at home further problems. A twenty-six-year-old legal secretary in California reports that her husband “does no cooking, no washing, no anything else. How do I feel? Furious. If our marriage ends, it will be on this issue. And it just might.”
Serious as these problems are, the most alarming development may be the effect of the work explosion on the care of children. According to economist Sylvia Hewlett, child neglect has become endemic to our society.” A major problem is that children are increasingly left alone, to fend for themselves while their parents are at work. Nationwide, estimates of children in “self”—or, more accurately, “no”—care range up to seven million. Local studies have found figures of up to one-third of children caring for themselves. At least half a million preschoolers are thought to be left at home part of each day. One 911 operator reports large numbers of frightened callers: “It’s not uncommon to hear from a child of six or seven who has been left in charge of even younger siblings.”
Even when parents are at home, overwork may leave them with limited time, attention, or energy for their children. One working parent noted, “My child has severe emotional problems because I am too tired to listen to him. It is not quality time; it’s bad quantity time that’s destroying my family.” Economist Victor Fuchs has found that between 1960 and 1986, the time parents actually had available to be with children fell ten hours a week for whites and twelve for blacks. Hewlett links the “parenting deficit” to a variety of problems plaguing the country’s youth: poor performance in school, mental problems, drug and alcohol use, and teen suicide. According to another expert, kids are being “cheated out of childhood…There is a sense that adults don’t care about them.”
Of course, there’s more going on here than lack of time. Child neglect, marital distress, sleep deprivation, and stress-related illnesses all have other causes. But the growth of work has exacerbated each of these social ailments. Only by understanding why we work as much as we do, and how the demands of work affect family life, can we hope to solve these problems. . .
…By understanding how we came to be caught up in the cycle of work-and-spend, perhaps we can regain a reasonable balance between work and leisure.
Much good luck to you on resolving the other issues, you will need a good vacation after all this stress. You were missed.
