A recent Economist article explains how this happened.
Centuries ago, working long hours was generally seen as something done by the poor and uneducated.
Today, the opposite is true. As we’ve shifted from a manual labor society to a knowledge society, richer peoples’ work hours have continually grown while poorer folks’ hours have stagnated or even declined.
Some notes from the article:
- In the 1800s, the average English manual laborer worked 64 hours a week
- In 1965, the unemployment rate for high school graduates was 2.9% higher than college graduates; today it’s 8.4% higher
- In 2005, college graduates had less leisure time than those with only a high school diploma
- In 2013, college graduates worked 2 hours more each day than those with only a high school diploma
- Why has this happened?
- 1. Substitution effect – higher wages increase the opportunity cost of leisure
- 2. Changing views on work – leisure used to be a badge of honor, something most people strived for; those with plenty of leisure time, such as the aristocratic/landed/upper class, spent their time doing things like writing, philanthropy, and art; today, hard work is viewed in a similar way
- Employment prospects have declined for the poor, for those with low skill and low education levels
“I come to work to relax,” one interviewee tells Ms. Hochschild. And wealthy people often feel that lingering at home is a waste of time.
“Less educated people are not necessarily buying their way into leisure,” explains Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago. “Some of that time off work may be involuntary.”