Photo: Ivan Samkov

Why do Americans work so much?

The explanation is quite simple: American workers have much shorter vacations and many fewer public holidays than other workers. Over the last forty years, people in other wealthy countries have made the political choice to accept slightly lower annual incomes in exchange for less time working. Americans have not.

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Why Americans work so much

“Timer Clock” by Free-Photos. Pixabay License via Pixabay.

In this excerpt from Spending Time: The Most Valuable Resource, Daniel S. Hamermesh examines the American desire to spend more time working than in other similarly wealthy countries. The usual workweek in the US — less than forty hours per week — does not seem onerous. In Western Europe, the length of workweeks is also around forty hours. Yet somehow actual hours worked per year in the US exceed those in Western Europe, often by a lot. The explanation is quite simple: American workers have much shorter vacations and many fewer public holidays than other workers. Over the last forty years, people in other wealthy countries have made the political choice to accept slightly lower annual incomes in exchange for less time working. Americans have not. There are various explanations for Americans’ “extra” time at work. Perhaps there is a special American work ethic that values time spent at work more than in other countries. Maybe, but Americans’ work orientation was the same as that in Western Europe in the 1970s, and it is hard to believe that the cultures changed so much and diverged so considerably over so short a period of time that it has caused Americans now to be working so much more than Europeans. Another explanation is that American taxes on work — payroll and labor income taxes — are low compared to those in most rich countries, giving workers incentives to seek more work and providing employers incentives to offer it to them. This argument is difficult to credit, since Americans’ tax rates have been lower than those in Europe for over fifty years, yet until the late twentieth century, Americans’ work time differed little from Europeans’. Japanese tax rates are also low, yet the Japanese too work increasingly less than Americans. Even taking some high estimates of the impact of taxes on labor force participation or weekly work hours, the US-European difference in tax rates cannot explain the differences in work time.

Another possibility is an argument made in the early 1990s that Americans work harder because the barrage of advertising that assaults us daily leads us to desire more goods — leads to consumerism — that must be financed by the additional work that we do. The premise of the argument was correct — we are constantly deluged by advertisements, including now when we surf the Web, but so too are people in other rich countries. Unless one believes that Americans are more easily manipulated by advertisers than Europeans or others, why should they be more desirous of “things” than people elsewhere?

More importantly, why should we care if people choose to work a lot? The issue is not that I work a lot — that’s my own choice. Rather, it is that I may be addicted to work — I may be a workaholic, someone who can’t let go and who suffers withdrawal symptoms when not working.

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So what if I am a workaholic — isn’t that my own business? No, no more than my being a drug addict, a three-pack-a-day cigarette smoker, or an alcoholic is my own business. If I am a workaholic, and a high-paid, highly placed, powerful one, my workaholism will spill over onto the work time of my subordinates. Executives will work long hours and insist that their assistants do the same if they wish to keep their jobs. The assistants will put in those long hours and will remain in their jobs, since they are paid more than they would receive starting off anew elsewhere. Workaholics have similar impacts on their families. I may work long hours in my later years because I have become a workaholic, working longer and enjoying less leisure with my wife than she would want. Our family income is higher as a result, but my wife would happily give up some of the extra dollars to be able to spend more time enjoying leisure with me. She is better off than if she divorced me but not as well off as she would be if I worked less, earned less, and spent more time with her. Workaholism is an addiction that affects other people. It generates what economists call “externalities,” negative impacts on others that we produce by our freely chosen activities. The discussion of why Americans’ work habits are now different from other rich countries has either been negative or theoretical or institutional, but these explanations are consistent using people’s behavior. They also provide strong hints at how public policy might be changed to improve Americans’ work lives.

medium.com - Why Americans work so much - Medium

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