While corporate profits are at all-time highs and corporate executives are receiving record bonuses, the average full-time worker works longer and longer hours to try and make ends meet. Getting more from the people you employ is called productivity. Give 2% wage increases, make your salaried workers put in a couple more hours per week, raise prices by 5%, buy back your own stock, redistribute the stock to executives, and see your stock hit new highs. It’s the American way. I wonder how many of the 6.5 million “new” jobs created since Obama assumed command were actually people taking a second job to try and stay even?
You will find more statistics at Statista
According to a Gallup poll, most Americans are working far beyond their contractual obligations. In fact, the work week in the United States is nearly an entire working day longer than standard. A working week lasting 40 hours has become standard practice in the United States (on paper at least) but adults employed full time are now reporting an average of 47 work hours every week.
Why? Pay structure is a factor – hourly workers face limits by cost-cutting employers while those on a salary tend to work a higher number of hours every week. Some Americans have a second job and this is also contributing to those long hours every week.
That sounds waaaaay to little. Especially for professionals on salary. A 47 hour week would have been a blessing. 50-60 hours was more normal, at least for me.
Same here… it would be great to work only 47 hours a week, but everyone is so afraid of being laid off that you just keep putting in the time to get the work done, particularly after they’ve already laid off a good chunk of staff and you still need to cover the same volume of work.
I can verify that in nursing at least, this number is drastically low. I worked for a relatively brief time as a salaried nurse in home health. My contract stated 32 hours per week, my choice as I was (and am) in school. By the time I quit, I was putting in 60-70 hours per week – 40+ seeing patients, 30+ with call and paperwork. When I quit I told them I refused to do this amount of work, it violated my contract. They had the nerve to tell me “but you HAVE to.” I responded that the only two things I HAD to do in this life are pay taxes and die, and the paying taxes was iffy. They were flabbergasted that I actually refused and left my stuff in the office.
I will never, and I mean NEVER again take a salaried job, not for any price. I will work for a percentage, by the hour, or for myself, but never again salary. It’s a screw job for the employee, and a bonanza for the employer.
Admin takes a small factoid and twists shit out of it.
Does the US really want to work a 35 hour week like the frogs? Since when is 47 hours per week a lot?
What percent of those 47 hours are unpaid? It does not say.
What impact did Obamacare have? Ie lots of businesses would work their full timers more hours to keep the number of employees down.
Come on, Admin, there is some meat on the bones of this story.
CEOs sit on good news till it’s time to sell stock, study finds
Chief executives strategically time the release of good news to coincide with months in which their equity vests, according to a new study.
The study, first reported by the Financial Times, found that CEOs apportion 5% more “discretionary news” in vesting month than in prior months.
The study by the London Business School’s Alex Edmans and Moqi Xu, the National University of Singapore’s Luis Goncavles-Pinto and Insead’s Yanbo Wang looked at company news releases and the subsequent media reports for tone. The disclosure of one discretionary news item in a vesting month generates a significant 16-day abnormal return of 28 basis points, they found.
Since the average CEO equity sale is over 6% of average daily trading volume, chief executives also benefit from the increased liquidity caused by an information release.
– Steve Goldstein
The salaried people where I work put in more than 47 hours/week. Some are doing 60+. When I got promoted I had the option of going to a salaried position or remain hourly. Took about two seconds to choose hourly. They tried to sweeten the salaried position with extra weeks of vacation and a few extra goodies but the salaried people already get fucked out their vacation so that was a non starter. I still have to work some overtime but they hate paying it so it’s kept to a minimum. Unfortunately the next four weeks are overtime weeks!
Rule #1 for consideration of a salaried job – drive by the office/building at 7 pm and count/note cars in the lot. On your final interview – pre-offer – see if you can find those same cars. If you can ask what department the owners work for.
I was once offered a job where I was promised no more than 5 hours of OT a week with the exception of quarter & year end. I interviewed in November and there were more than 10 cars habitually in the parking lot past 7 pm.
The Controller was *shocked* when I asked about them. He mumbled a bunch and attempted to come up with some lame “special” reason.
I told him to level with me BEFORE I started, because I would quit without notice if I found he lied to me.
Needless to say he decided to tell the truth, and I decided to pass on the job.
Some jobs require OT at certain times of the year, and that is to be expected. Paying “salary” but requiring 80 hours a week is nothing but slave labor. Ranks right up there on my shit list with unpaid internships.
And still the majority believe the government is “looking out” for us. What tools and fools we are.
Some of the underhanded ways hourly employees are screwed over is in the janitorial field where the jobs are individual offices or buildings which are cleaned. The business is cut throat as hell because everyone and their brother can “clean”. Well, the jobs are underbid and it is up to the cleaning crews to make up the difference by reporting less time than it actually takes to clean a particular building. If you report more time than they give you, you get called into the office and told that it should only take X number of minutes for a building.
I had one medical office building which had 3 public restrooms, 16 exam rooms, a break room, reception area with entry way, and offices for the doctors, billing staff and nurses stations. Not sure about square footage, but the number of individual spaces didn’t allow you to just run through the building and clean on the way through, you had tile floors and carpeting to clean, trashes to dump, toilets to clean, sinks, exam beds, shelves, etc. We were given 1 hour (60 minutes) and we routinely had to do 20 minutes off the clock, because we were so “slow”. Oh, if it wasn’t clean, you would definitely hear about it.
I was in the Army for 8 years. I was raised by an actual drill sergeant from the 60’s. I know how to clean and be efficient. After 6 years of this, I wore out countless soles on work boots and really screwed up my body. People are really being ground up in this economy. It is very Dickensian to me.
I worked very long hours as a salaried employee. It paid off a hundredfold in the long run. I gained more experience in less time than my competition.
Career middle managers will cry about their hours. If you want to get good skills and experience in a short time, and you want success, you need to put in the time when you are young.
Here is the formula I recommend to young folks. I expect that very few follow it.
Work 100 hours per week until age 30. You will be ten years ahead of your competition in skill and experience. If the hours were spent wisely, you will be ready for upper management positions.
Work 80 hours per week until age 35. You will now be 15years ahead of your competition, and be ready for very senior management positions.
Work 60 hoursper week until age 40. You will be almost 20 years ahead of your competition.
With a bit of luck, you can scale back markedly after that and enjoy the fruits from the tree you sowed earlier.
There are no guarantees. But this type plan gives the best chance of success.
But what do I know?
and then came Red Terror 2009 when the tab for debt based living came due…
24 Years Of America’s Unemployment Rate In 10 Seconds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/31/america-unemployment-map_n_5744656.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
My dh is salaried. I don’t know how many hours per week he puts in on average, but his life at home is nothing but interruptions. Phone calls when he tries to relax, have a meal, mow the lawn, watch a game. Phone calls disturbing our sleep, (weekends too) phone calls on vacation even.
It is unrelenting stress, not just because of the calls, but also because of the idiots he has to work with. It’s frightening really. Many of his co-workers truly cannot think correctly. Daily screw-ups and yet no accountability. The co-worker mindset is: how can we do this, so that it makes my life easier? His mindset is: what is the right thing to do for the customer so that they come back to us again?
If everything works out, he is preparing to take a job, for the same company, at probably half the pay.
He will work M-F, 8-5. That’s it. When he walks out the door at the end of the day, he’s done. Minimal interaction with idiots.
Money isn’t everything and it most certainly doesn’t buy happiness or good health.
He can say “Screw it.” for two reasons. We are not raising children and…we have no debt.
Llpoh, your ‘formula’ is exactly what I did, and I admit, it pays off. Hardly anyone is willing to work that way any more, though. And it’s a big reason why I never got married and had a family. But hey, I’m near the top of my profession.
It’s all a trade-off, in one way or another.