America's Workers: Stressed Out, Overwhelmed, and Totally Exhausted

January 18, 2018

From working long hours away from home and letting precious vacation time go to waste, Americans are constantly clocked in no matter where they are.

Alone, the average full-time American employee works right around 1,700 hours per year, according to Business Insider.

So the question then remains as such: Are Americans working too much?

The answer is yes, and to back this up, recent studies have also pointed towards the affirmative.

According to a study done by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics that compared 134 countries and their working climates, Americans work an additional 258 hours per year or an hour more each weekday than the usual median working standard.

Looking at this number, the thoughts of Oh my God, and How in the world did this happen? come to mind.

It boils down to American society, and the workaholic corner Americans have boxed themselves into.

We, as Americans, work too many hours, and this can be detrimental not only to health, but towards family relationships as well.

According to the Center for American Progress on the topic of Work and Family Life Balance, “in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.”

While it doesn’t matter who stays home and who works in terms of gender (work opportunity equality for all – it’s a family choice), when all adults are working (single or with a partner), that’s a huge hit to the American family and free-time in the American household.

However, there are some that say compared to other countries, Americans are drama queens just complaining about their hours.

According to an article by Forbes Magazine, the “Overworked American” is a myth.

Claiming that not that many Americans are significantly overworked, the article written by journalist Jeffrey Dorfman, goes on to say that “the amount ordinary workers work each week is not overwhelming, out-of-line with other countries, or particularly trending upwards over time.”

But can one forget about student workers who also take a hit in the family department, as the constant juggle of school work, outside activities, and working hours cut into family time?

Or salaried workers who, according to Heather Boushey, executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, spend their family time working overtime at the request of their bosses without ensured overtime pay.

Meaning in layman’s terms- not all workers get home on time and not all workers get guaranteed overtime pay for their input of hours.

Americans have also gotten into the custom of working on holidays- days that were originally spent at home with family and away from the office.

A quarter of Americans will be required to work on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day or New Year’s Day this year, according to Allstate National Journal’s annual Heartland Monitor Poll.

More over, 45% of those polled said there’s at least a chance they will work one of those holidays.

While retail workers have elicited increasing public outrage over holiday scheduling, particularly in recent years as stores have moved opening hours into Thanksgiving, employees in industries including law enforcement, health care, travel, utilities, freight and news also all work over the holidays.

So do Americans really live up to the saying of “working to live?”

I’m not saying that American workers should work less hours- if you genuinely love what you do and are doing it for the right reasons, you are more than entitled to spend all of your waking hours plugging away.

What we all need to remind ourselves is that it doesn’t have to be this way- don’t let life pass by in favor of spending over 80 hours a week inside a cubicle.

Americans just need to draw the line and say enough is enough.