http://20somethingfinance.com/american- ... -vacation/

We, as Americans, work too many hours. If you don’t believe so, check out the following data points that compare us to our peers around the world.

American Work-Life Balance
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.” That’s at least a 50% increase in working mothers – and a huge hit to the American family and free-time in the American household.

• The U.S. is the ONLY country in the Americas without a national paid parental leave benefit. The average is over 12 weeks of paid leave anywhere other than Europe and over 20 weeks in Europe.
• Zero industrialized nations are without a mandatory option for new parents to take parental leave. That is, except for the United States.

American Average Work Hours:

• At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week; the U.S. does not.
• In the U.S., 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females work more than 40 hours per week.
• According to the ILO, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”
• Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.

American Paid Vacation Time & Sick Time:

• There is not a federal law requiring paid sick days in the United States.
• The U.S. remains the only industrialized country in the world that has no legally mandated annual leave.
• In every country included except Canada and Japan (and the U.S., which averages 13 days/per year), workers get at least 20 paid vacation days. In France and Finland, they get 30 – an entire month off, paid, every year.
• Then there’s this depressing graph on average paid vacation time in industrialized countries:

The Impact of Too Much Work
I’m not telling you to 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.

But for many of us, more work leads to more stress and a lower quality of life. Without time to unwind, take care of your home, spend time with loved ones, enjoy our hobbies, connect with friends, and generally live a more balance life. Stress is the #1 cause of health problems – mentally and physically. And there are few things that stress us out on a consistent basis like work does, especially when it takes away from all of the other things that life has to offer.

Americans are the Outliers
And if all of this data tells anything, it’s that we are the outliers, not the norm. Why are we the outliers?

• Our companies fairly ruthlessly let people go. We want to keep our jobs and not be a ‘low performer’ compared to others.
• Decay of the union has led to less paid time off and other leave benefits.
• Cultural value of money over everything else. We love money, we want more of it, and we think money can buy happiness. And the more we work, the more we get paid.
• It’s been drilled in our heads that we are lazy compared to emerging market counterpart workers in India, Mexico, China, and other parts of Asia. Who isn’t? And what is our mental image of the work environments in those locales? To validate those fears, our jobs are being outsourced to the cheap labor in those countries. In reality, the U.S. is still the world leader in productivity per person.
• Our legislative branch of the government (on both sides of the aisle) has been bought and as a result has shied away from passing laws that protect workers that every other industrialized nation has passed.
  We generally don’t fight for our working rights. We take what is given to us.

There were so many loaded assumptions in that article that I'm trying to figure out where to even start.

B thread

yeah, but there's a BAR GRAPH

Yeah, well ... it starts a discussion.

everyone who messageboards at work should unionize and negotiate (based on actual productivity) for three hour workdays.

True...I'll give it a stab:

That one line says a lot more than I think the author is letting on. Having such a cultural value is a clear choice. I've intentionally sought out employment that may compensate me less monetarily, but has other added non-monetary values, of which reasonable hours and scheduling is certainly one of them.

It's also a bold assumption that infers that all Americans are money obsessed. Even if most are, there are plenty that aren't.

the phrase "cultural value" implies a generalization by the author.

Isn' t this about creating a federal law around this? I'm not so sure that's a good thing as that would simply eliminate more jobs.

For the record though those of us who have PTO included in our compensation already... how many of those days do you actually take a year?

There are people with 4 and 5 weeks paid that they have available to them but they couldn't do thier job if they took the time off that they earn.

Any time off we take is added stress on the other team members. It's not like we have anyone available to take up slack. American businesses run as thin as humanly possible.

this post as a whole doesn't add up. wouldn't a federal law mandating more paid time off create a need for businesses to hire more employees (more jobs) to cover when other employees are taking vacation?

So what?

The 35 hour workweek in France didn't have this effect.

I've done the same thing and I feel like while I have a little less money to throw around, I am able to pursue acting, be a mentor and do other things I probably couldn't (or wouldn't want to) if I worked a traditional 40-hour schedule.

This is a weak argument, that I take offense to. My wife and I both work. We made the decision because she wanted to work and be productive and creative when the kids are older. Taking 5-7 years off would put a damper on that.

Plus, I'm not really sure how working moms fit into those stats. Working moms are on a steep rise that has little to do with America's "work-obsessed" culture.

Still, time away from family is one reason I'm looking for a new job.

Where I work the full timers get a pretty decent amount of paid time off and if it encourages hiring it just encourages hiring part timers to fill in the gaps.

How 'bout the fact that they compare "working mothers" to household adults. Perhaps you (B) don't cite where they get their data but if the author can't expound like for like well, sitonitandtwirl20somethignfinance.com

BTW, if they did the site has been loading for about a half hour to render a db error.

I would like to challenge the assumption that productivity has increase 400%. Is this based on hours worked?

Also, I disagree with the idea of sick days. Starting at my company you get 15 days off and no sick days; at the client I'm working for, it's 10 days off and 10 sick days. I'd rather have my 15 (which is now 20 since I've been there for a few years). I'd rather all sick days be converted to personal time off.

But maybe I'm just biased, since I get 28 days off per year.

we also get paid more than other in other countries, so lets bitch about that too

That's some bullshit right there

several of which have universal health care systems