August 29, 2014

40 hour work week dying

Gallup - Adults employed full time in the U.S. report working an average of 47 hours per week, almost a full workday longer than what a standard five-day, 9-to-5 schedule entails. In fact, half of all full-time workers indicate they typically work more than 40 hours, and nearly four in 10 say they work at least 50 hours.

2 comments:

robbie said...

Yeah, but I'm paid more for all time over 40 hours, which can make for some seriously fat pay checks. Is it a lot? Yeah, it can be. I've worked 2 separate 78-hour weeks in the last few years. The paycheck was worth it for me, although I can understand it may be too much for some people.

Anonymous said...

Many of the people working over 40 hours a week are working for a salary. My husband works 50-60 hours a week. His manages a work unit of 12 that needs 3 more people to complete the full work load by the daily deadline. His skinflint employer, a "too big to fail" financial institution that hasn't given a raise of over 2% for top employees since 2007, has finally after more than a year of pleading, decided he can hire one person of the 3 he needs.

All the production work must be done each day. Overtime is not allowed without approval from above, which is rarely given. The net affect is my husband works an extra 10-20 hours a week doing the jobs of 3 extra people, but he doesn't make an extra penny, nor does he get any comp time. He goes in to work on weekends, he works extra late hours each night, and he regularly works from home on his laptop in addition to all the office hours. Last year for our Staycation he had a working Staycation, and put in at least 6 hours a day at work on his laptop every "vacation day".

Being in his early 50s he has been looking for a new position for over 5 years, but he us up against the preference for business to sideline anyone over 50. His employer is quite happy that he works 60 hours a week where he is. He was reorganized into this position after 2007, so it wasn't even a job he wanted in the first place, but with 25 years at the company, and few well paying jobs out there, we feel rather stuck, with few options to improve matters.