Re: US average weekly hours worked (Why is America so violent)
On May 14, 2007, at 4:44 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
I think the comment of Doug’s Miles remembers is this:
“Total hours worked in the U.S. private sector have risen 70% since
1973; the pop is up only 43%. So the rise in aggregate consumption has come with a huge increase in the work
effort”Which is an estimate of the total hours worked, in relation to the
total population, whereas you would need to relate it to the working
population to get the hours worked by an average American.
In the 1950s and 1960s, 56-57% of the adult U.S. population worked
for pay. That rose to 60% in the 1980s, and peaked at almost 65% in
2000. It fell in the recession and has risen slowly since, and is now
around 63%. So a larger portion of the U.S. pop is working for pay
than in the “Golden Age” - mainly women. Male participation rates
have fallen, esp for older people. A major reason the average
individual workweek (now 33.8 hours, just above its all-time low) has
fallen is the declining weight of manufacturing, where the average
workweek is 41 hours. Manufacturing was 30% of the workforce in 1950;
21% in 1980; now, it’s 10%.
Doug