In the United States, the flip side of increasing consumption over the last 30 years has been increasing hours of work. The increase in hours of work is surprising first because it goes against historical trends: until 1940, the length of the workday fell continuously, and workers gained additional vacation time. This forward progress has continued in most European countries, which have strong unions. U.S. manufacturing employees now work almost two months per year longer than their German or French counterparts.
The increase in work hours is also surprising because economists assume that leisure is a normal good: as people get richer, they should consume more of it.
Instead, leisure appears to be an inferior good. Since 1948, U.S. output per worker has more than doubled. In other words, we could consume at the level of our parents in early adulthood, and take every other year off . Instead, we work a little harder and consume more than twice as much.
1. Economist Juliet Schor identifies two chief culprits behind the increased workweek: hiring incentives and the lack of a strong union movement to push for shorter hours. As far as incentives go, even though employers must, by law, pay time and a half for overtime, they seem to prefer this to hiring new employees. Why do you think this might be?
2. Among salaried and professional employees, Schor argues that increased competition has led to a natural upward progression in hours spent at the office.
The monster workweek experienced by young doctors is becoming common for corporate lawyers, accountants, architects, and other professionals. In an increasingly competitive environment, “ ‘enough’ is defined not by some preexisting standard like the length of the workday, but by the limits of human endurance” (Kanter, as cited in Schor 1991, 70). Some economists respond that there is nothing wrong with this lengthening of the workweek. If people didn’t like it, they could just quit and choose less demanding jobs that offer more leisure and result in less consumption. Do you agree?