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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.