A U.N. agency provided some discouraging news yesterday to Americans who believe they are overworked, finding that American workers have increased their substantial lead over Japan and all other industrial nations in the number of hours worked each year.
The report, issued by the International Labor Organization, found that Americans added nearly a full week to their work year during the 1990s, climbing to 1,978 hours on average last year, up 36 hours - almost a full work week - from 1990. That means Americans who are employed are putting in nearly 49 1/2 weeks a year on the job.
Americans work 100 more hours or 2 1/2 weeks more per year than Japanese workers, 250 hours (about 6 weeks) more per year than British workers and 500 hours (12 1/2 weeks) more per year than German workers, the report said.
The Japanese were long at the top of the heap for the number of hours worked, but in the mid-1990s the United States surpassed Japan, and since then the United States has pulled further ahead.
"It's unique to Americans that they continue to increase their working hours, while hours are declining in other industrialized nations," said Lawrence Jeff Johnson, the economist who oversaw the labor organization's report.
"It has a lot to do with the American psyche, with American culture. American workers are eager to make the best impression, to put in the most hours," he said.
Many economists say the numbers demonstrate that the U.S. economic boom of the 1990s provided plenty of work for tens of millions of Americans.
In contrast, the economies of Europe and Japan grew far more slowly, if at all, causing many companies to cut back on the length of the workweek.
Patrick Cleary, senior vice president for human resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, said, "Clearly, for most of these years, the increase in hours tracks outstanding economic performance in the United States, which translates into more income for all those workers, so we don't see this necessarily as bad news at all."
Vacation time
Among the reasons for the large differences between the United States and other countries are that Europeans typically take four to six weeks of vacation each year while Americans take two to three weeks.
And while American employers kept adding overtime during the 1990s, in France the government reduced the official workweek to 35 hours with the aim of pressuring companies to hire more workers.
