work time

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 1:05 PM 4/26/96, Rahul Mahajan wrote:

>True enough, Doug, but this doesn't support the contention that people
>*today* work longer hours than they did centuries ago. Are you talking
>about an average over the world, or would you claim that people in the West
>work longer hours today than, say, 3 centuries ago? If the latter, could
>you provide some documentation. The work required in agriculture varies
>greatly over the course of the year, of course, but when you add in all the
>household work, it would seem that your thesis is very questionable. And,
>of course, this doesn't address the big difference between "mental" work
>and physical work.

>From Juliet Schor, The Overworked American (Basic Books, 1991):

Average annual hours at work:

1200    1620
1300    1440
1500    2309
1600    1980
1840    3105-3588
1850    3150-3650
1988    1800 (avg. of US & UK figures)

[note the 1988 figure includes part-time workers; the typical full-time US
worker, putting in 40 hours a week, 50 weeks per year, logs 2000 hours]

Total avnnual hours, labor force participants

        1969    1987    change
market
------
all     1786    1949    +163
men     2054    2152    + 98
women   1406    1711    +305

h'hold
------
all      889     888    -  1
men      621     689    + 68
women   1268    1123    -145

total
-----
all     2675    2837    +162
men     2675    2841    +166
women   2674    2834    +160

"The pace of work [400-500 years ago] was also far below modern standards
-- in part becuse the general pace of life in medieval society was
leisurely. The French historian Jacques LeGoff has described precapitalist
labor time 'as still the time of an economy dominated by agrarian rhythms,
free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by productivity....'
Consciousness of time was radically different.... There was little idea of
time saving, punctuality, or evan a clear perception of past and future....
The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church
-- holidays included not only long 'vacations' at Christmas, Easter, and
midsummer, but also numerous saints' and rest days. These were spent both
in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking, and merrymaking. In
addition to official celebrations, there were often weeks' worth of
ales.... All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up
probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently
working harder than their neighbors. The ancien regime in France is
reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and
thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five
months a year.... There is considerable evidence of what economists call a
backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise,
workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the
late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work.... [T]hey worked
only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income."

Now I don't cite this to argue for some return to primitive simplicity -
just to show that we (in the First World at least) work longer and harder
now than did our ancestors 700 years ago.

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
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