According to the BLS only 146M people are working in US - 46% of total population or 59% of working-age adults. And 26M of these are parttime. Goes to show you working hours are not evenly distributed among people.
Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
11–20 of 269 posts
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#12>The United States is the only advanced country that doesn't guarantee that its citizens will get paid vacation time and holidays
I find the reasoning consistently maddening. What they should be saying is that there is no federal mandate for private employers to pay workers during vacation/convalescence/maternity leave.
In point of fact, for government workers there is paid annual/maternity/paternity leave which ends up being "use or lose" and in effect becomes a mandatory leave - something universally omitted in these articles.
I think this just comes back to the classic debate about how the American economy is organized. Our constitution and US Code is not organized such that the government can easily dictate laws to private employers, that is by design.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#13I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare a metric like GDP. Using this, the US is #6 world-wide only behind two European countries. So yes, Euros may get more time off, but the US is a way more economically powerful and productive country economically. Hurting the economy, sure people get burned out,…
Yeah, all these Europe's way are better articles and books fall a little flat considering how terrible their economies are nowadays. It sounds like they are saying, "come be like us! Our nations can't even make their debt payments!"
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#14Often, when articles highlight bad laws or customs, economical arguments are brought up.
Workaholism -> backfires and is bad for the economy
and in recent threads here on HN:
Workplace surveillance -> backfires, people feel controlled and performance suffers
Government espionage in USA -> backfires, people lose trust in US businesses
I don't feel that this is the strongest argument. "Please treat us better, it is in your own interest!"?
Germany's vacation was achieved through politics (labor laws) and unions (labor contracts).
The economic argument probably won't work, since economic considerations (real or imagined/short-term/local maximum...) have led to the current situation in the first place.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#15It seems like study after study shows that longer working hours don't result in long term productivity increases, but managers aren't listening. Is this an example of market failure or is there more going on?
My guess is it is people trusting their 'gut' over a study. Working long hours looks impressive. If you stay late or come in early you look like a team player who is willing to put in the extra effort. Whether or not that effort is actually valuable is immaterial, the appearance is what matters.
Call me cynical but I'd imagine that drives a lot of these overworked schedules.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#16It's frowned upon to take any time off in the US. I've seen it viewed as a sign of a lack of commitment or even laziness. Consequently, we take less time off because we're scared we're going to lose our jobs. No one is congratulated for taking time off in the middle of a project for your 'sanity' or 'to re-charge'. Everyone is scared. There is no safety net. It's no way to live, but it's our reality.
> There is no safety net.
That's a wonderfully succinct way of describing the US. It seems like in a lot of EU countries if you fail there is something to catch you (higher, longer, easier to get unemployment pay for one example), whereas there really is no lower limit on how low the US will let you fall (e.g. healthcare is a privilege not a right in the US).
They do say that the US has some of the highest anti-depressant medication usage in the whole world (or was it more than the rest of the world combined? I can never remember). That isn't a surprise when literally your health, shelter, food, etc is all riding on keeping a job.
Thank god for Obama care and the new ban on pre-existing condition limits (i.e. that you could not get insurance if you were sick before). It kept people enslaved into a single job if they ever got sick since they could never afford to lose that health insurance or they'd die.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#17And yet compared to those European countries, the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita. Doing work and getting paid for it hardly seems like it's hurting the economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...
As to the studies cited in the article I would point to the OECD labor productivity statistics which, in the aggregate, seem to disagree. http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL
The fact that Americans seem to only be able to find identity and meaning in their work, so much so as that it causes a psychic crisis to leave even temporarily, is the real problem, if it need be called such, rather than some imagined hurt to the economy. But that problem is so ingrained in our culture it is never going away.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#18It's frowned upon to take any time off in the US. I've seen it viewed as a sign of a lack of commitment or even laziness. Consequently, we take less time off because we're scared we're going to lose our jobs. No one is congratulated for taking time off in the middle of a project for your 'sanity' or 'to re-charge'. Everyone is scared. There is no safety net. It's no way to live, but it's our reality.
All depends where you work and the culture there. Might be frowned upon in some places but where I work everyone is more than happy to see people take time off.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#19I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare a metric like GDP. Using this, the US is #6 world-wide only behind two European countries. So yes, Euros may get more time off, but the US is a way more economically powerful and productive country economically. Hurting the economy, sure people get burned out,…
it also tries to state that working hard leads to less productivity, when US productivity eclipses most european countries. i had a consultant complain that they hate working with europeans. the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again
>> the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again
It's almost as if work is something they do to support a life outside the office.
Outrageous.
Re: Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy
#20Even worse is the new trend in technology companies to eliminate "Set Vacation". It used to be the case that you felt "obliged" somehow to take your 10 days of vacation a year, because you saw it piling up. Even better, if you were laid off, you could get the vacation in cash, and that helped when you were cut off without a job.
But now, a lot of technology companies are saying, "No Set Vacation - you need to negotiate with your manager if you want some" - which, in my experience, has resulted in a lot of people over the last two years taking zero vacation. It's not good for them. It's not good for the company. About the only people who are happy about this are Finance who no longer have to carry that liability on their books.