The overworked American
by Juliet Schor · first published 1991
9mentions
4recommended by
9HN commenters
2011–2026first – last mentioned
44% recommend44% neutral11% critical
This pathbreaking book explains why, contrary to all expectations, Americans are working harder than ever. The author presents the astonishing news that over the past twenty years our working hours have increased by the equivalent of one month per year, a dramatic spurt that has hit everybody: men and women, professionals as well as low paid workers. Why are we, unlike every other industrialized Western nation, repeatedly choosing money over time? And what can we do to get off the treadmill?
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…the average person on that plot line is now working 168 - 99 = 69 hours on average or 69 / 40 = 172.5% of a normal week. Sounds unbalanced to me. Juliet Schor has an excellent book on this subject The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure http://www.amazon.com/Overworked-American-Unexpected-Decline...
on “How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?” ↗…vacation" -- in truth, they had much more vacation. The average American male now works 270 hours more per year than the average American male of 1970. A useful (though old) book on this subject: The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure – by Juliet Schor
on “Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions” ↗I recommend everyone involved in this discussion pick up a book called "The Overworked American" by Juliet Schor. It was released almost 3 decades ago, yet remains an eye-opening account of the history and current reality of "middle class" work patterns. There's a part early on about piece-work…
on “Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It” ↗…faculties could be exercises); much of the literature describing back-breaking labor, written by the privileged classes, was actually a form of propaganda or wish-fulfillment fiction. I'd suggest reading The Overworked American by Juliet Schor. It provides an overview of historical modes of labor in the West.
on “Tech sector is pouring billions of dollars into AI. It keeps laying off humans” ↗The excerpt doesn't come from a paper -- it comes from the book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... If you want to be snarky, get the details right. Peasants' work output were calorie-restricted.…
on “Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)” ↗For context: The article is an excerpt from the book, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet B. Schor, published in 1991 (though maybe there are later editions). Here's a review: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/business/9... I wonder…
on “Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)” ↗…scholars including Gregory Clark, the economist most frequently credited with originating the 150-day-a-year estimate, and Juliet Schor, the economist who first popularized the claim in her 1991 book "The Overworked American." > We also spoke with Jane Humphries and Jacob Weisdorf, two economic historians who currently study the question of the length of the medieval working year and have recently published work supporting…
on “Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks” ↗All based on some extremely shoddy writing from 1993: > The origin point for nearly all of those “you work harder than a medieval peasant” memes and articles is Juliet Schor’s The Overworked American (1993). The argument has been debunked quite a few times, so I won’t belabor the point here. Schor bases her estimates of medieval working hours on a 1935 article by Nora Kenyon,1 and an unpublished article…
on “What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools (2022)” ↗Juliet B. Schor (b. 1955) is a professor at Harvard University, where she is both Senior Lecturer on Economics and also Director of Women's Studies. In her book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1991), she analyzes some surprising trends-historic, economic, and cultural-in the world of work, with a particular emphasis on the American worker. In the following…
on “The overworked american” ↗