Battleangel

Business Week surprises with a sort of ambitious analysis of how the American employment market has gone haywire and how the work week has increased for many with very few added benefits over the last decades.

More than 31% of college-educated male workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22% in 1980. Forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31% in 2001. About 60% of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at our desks.

This epidemic of long hours at the office — whether physically or remotely — defies historical precedent and common sense. Over the past 25 years, the Information Revolution has boosted productivity by almost 70%. So you would think that since we’re producing more in fewer hours, such gains would translate into a decrease in the workweek — as they have in the past. But instead of technology being a time-saver, says Warren Bennis, a University of Southern California professor and author of such management classics as On Becoming a Leader, “everybody I know is working harder and longer.”

Why is this interesting for the rest of the world? Mainly because, due to global competition, the American Dickensian system of recent years is about to take a tour of other industrialized nations. Nations that up to this point have shown a sharp decline in the length of the work week and an increase in actual quality of life.

At some point you just have to stop, look around and realize that your working for nothing. Much of the article deals with how people are getting little done despite horrendous hours. Inefficiency plainly speaking. Just working more isn’t the answer, especially when you’re not getting paid in relation to the overtime. People are surprisingly daft when it comes to realizing that the most important things in life happen outside of the workplace. And that work is the artificial world that has no basis in human nature. Going to work is just a means to achieve leisure ends or basic survival. If you can’t enjoy the benefits of work, then why even bother?