Top-Level Professionals View 40-Hour Work Week As Part-Time: Report

Over the last thirty years, the majority of Americans have started working longer hours while earning less, according to a recent report by the Center for American Progress.

The report finds that in in 2006, American families worked an average of 11 hours more per week than they did in 1979. Indeed, now many top-level professionals, lawyers and doctors view the traditional 40 hour work week as a "part-time" job, according to the report:

"Many feel, with some justification, that a 40-hour week would be career suicide. This schedule is seen as 'part time' in many professional-managerial jobs, and tends to spell a less-prestigious and less upwardly-mobile career path."

Examining two government surveys conducted roughly 30 years apart, one using data from 1977 to 1979 and the other using data from the years 2006 to 2008, the report finds that people's approach to work-life and work-family balance has changed significantly.

Supplanting the traditional 40-hour work week, many employees now work 50 hours or more. According to the report, male professionals especially work longer hours. 37.9 percent of men with professional and managerial positions worked over 50 hours a week between 2006 and 2008, compared to 34 percent from the years 1977 to 1979. With professional women, the change is even more striking: 14.4 percent work over 50 hours currently, while only 6.1 percent did 30 years ago.

Indeed, pressure for women to work longer hours is greater than ever, especially for professionals like lawyers: "Part-time' [female] lawyers often take an immediate wage cut of 20 percent per hour for a 'part-time' schedule of 40 hours a week," writes the report.

Only lower class men now work less hours than they have in the past, as the percentage of that demographic working over 50 hours per week has decreased by 7.4 percent over the same time period, indicating increased underemployment and difficulty finding full-time jobs, the report says.

Despite this, incomes for the most part have not matched the extra hours worked. Since 1979, incomes have decreased 29 percent for the lower class and 13 percent for the middle. Upper class wages, however, have increased 7 percent over the same time period, which reflects the trend of longer hours resulting in disproportionately higher wages while wages for those working 40 hours a week have largely stayed the same.

"In other words," the report says, "hours have spiraled up as men strive to ensure they don’t end up as 'losers.'”

The below graph charts the growing number of hours worked by American professionals:

Comments

[domnogin]

11:59 PM on 08/11/2011

#OperationStolenEarth It is not that hard, boys and girls. We Americans need to nationalize the rights that were once the privilege of a few high-demand jobs that could unionize or were offered in place of outlawed higher pay. Profits must be balanced with full employment. Giving everyone healthcare and education and paid vacations and sick leave would get rid of the current two-track system of sixty-hour full-timers and thirty-hour part-timers. Pay for this newly healthy and educated and efficient (like 2004's France) with a 1940's top marginal tax bracket: 91% for $1B and up (not $3M in today's $ like then), 74% for $500M and up, 50% for $20M and up, 39% for $1M and up. Match this Eisenhower-era maximum wage (that paid off The Second World War and the Korean War) with a minimum wage that rises from the pathetic $7.25/hour (despite Nancy Pelosi's efforts) by $1/hour to $10/hour (about 1968 level in today's $) to $15/hour (what Ralph Nader says is the productivity-adjusted rate) to reconnect the high- and low-income earners. This could resurrect the forty-hour-workweek that Joe Hill and other unionizers died to create. In the short run, an armada of Chapter 15 AM transmitter may be required; too many metropolitan areas lack the option of Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, and Randi Rhodes, leaving NPR/APM to try to show that they are not the liberal media. http://domnogin.blogspot.com

[Bruckley]

12:08 AM on 07/10/2011

I'll gladly have no house, no family, an old car and work 20 hour weeks.

[Scott Fraley]

02:17 PM on 07/05/2011

Employers and Republicans view human life as an obstacle to work.

[opmik75]

01:21 PM on 07/05/2011

Oh the times how they're a-changing...

[StopMakingSense2]

12:22 PM on 07/05/2011

If republicans have their way you will live to work not work to live.

[jcaunter]

12:40 PM on 07/05/2011

Why do you imagine Democrats are any better? They're just as equally bought as Republicans.

[feo]

11:40 AM on 07/05/2011

I'm now a slacker. I used to do the 60 hour routine, but no more. Old age will do that to you.

[StopMakingSense2]

12:24 PM on 07/05/2011

Fear not republicans are doing everything they can to make sure you become economically insecure, can't retire, and work till you drop.

[Kinniver]

11:11 AM on 07/05/2011

I don't even know what a 40 hour work week looks like anymore, granted I spend a ton time at my home office and as little time as I can at my other office but 50-60 hours a week is typical. However back in the day, 1990's, when I worked at Ford HQ I was expected to put in 50 hours a week, pretty much everyone was. I know a really great guy that got promoted then got fired because he would only work 40 hours a week. He could not manage the family and work so when I got my business up and running I hired him; he now works at home and can put in 50 hours easy. It was just a matter of access to his family.

The problem is companies need to start allowing their workers to work from home as much as possible if not all the time with the occasional face to face with the customers. It saves a ton of money on office space and the workers are happier. At least that is my experience.

[Pandoras Folly]

10:18 AM on 07/05/2011

Had a college friend who had a major problem with his boss wanting to work him overtime, was also verbally abusive. He tried to reason with him, finally he said look I'm only going to work a 50 hour work week and if you fire me for I'll pull you into eternal litigation: my brother, my uncle, and my cousins are Lawyers.

[StopMakingSense2]

12:26 PM on 07/05/2011

Yes republican's only understand lawsuits. That's why they are doing all they can to make them harder to do..

[marijam]

07:58 AM on 07/05/2011

Some jobs lend themselves to working extra hours, but in other jobs, if you have to work extra hours, then you're not doing a very good job to begin with. Top level managers are never truly "off" from work. Companies are making due with less, meaning that somebody has to do the work that otherwise just wouldn't get done.

[mogens]

06:23 AM on 07/05/2011

Just to clarify. There are different working hours in the different EU-countries (35 in France, 37 in Denmark, 40 i Sweden ect.). Those, who has signed the social charter (almost all excluding GB) has a max. working week of 48 hours. In GB there is no limit.
This only goes for emplyees. Self employed and employers can work as long as they want, and if you are an employee in one firm, you can be self employed in your spare time.
The reason for these rules is not only to protect the workers, but also to avoid social dumping.
We don't want the race to the bottom here. It creates a bad society.

[rodjard]

03:15 AM on 07/05/2011

I absolutely refuse to voluntarily put myself into a class bracket.
I am an individual U. S. citizen.
The place I work or the position
I hold there is not who I am.
The Car I drive is not who I am.
The church I attend is not who I am.
My Gender is not who I am.
My Race is not who I am.
i AM ONE INDIVIDUAL, FREE UNITED STATES CITIZEN.
I am a free person in a free society.
We do not or should never voluntarily place our free selves into
a cast system to be bracketed and exploited.

[Bruckley]

12:10 AM on 07/10/2011

What you think of you and what others think of you are not the same thing.

[rodjard]

01:23 AM on 07/10/2011

Maybe the difference is that I know how to tell them where to go.

[rodjard]

02:41 AM on 07/05/2011

Would there be an unemployment problem if everyone was
working 40 hrs. per week for enough to support a family?

Would we have unsupervised kids on the streets if Moms and
Dads had evenings and weekends to spend with them?

Dinner time is 6.00 pm. The whole family will be at the table.

[rodjard]

02:27 AM on 07/05/2011

There is more to life than the full time 40 hr. job one has.
Life ain't all about being exploited for any other time that workers have.
There is a family at home that needs attention too.
Boy Scout Leaders, Little League Coaches and other community
activities are also essential parts of valuable employee's lives.
8 to 5 Monday through Friday is all you get. There are valuable
parts of life that are too precious to be lost to the companies greed.

[FoxIslander]

11:35 PM on 07/04/2011

"Over the last thirty years, the majority of Americans have started working longer hours while earning less"

...sounds like the "American dream" to me.

[Nobody78]

09:53 AM on 07/04/2011

Another thing to remember is that most families now days also have two people working, so it is like it requires 50+ hrs a week more to pull in the same income 30yrs ago. And the baggers on the Right think we just need to work harder.