A former boss of mine had a well-rehearsed response for any employee who complained they had too much work.  There are twenty-one 8-hr workdays in a week, he would say;  three in each of the seven 24-hour days.  If you are only using five out of those twenty-one, you are clearly just lazy.

Although the 40-hour workweek would be a dream come true for many (unless you happen to live in Luxembourg) , there are few among us who could ever envision working the 168 hours suggested by this guy.  The average full time US worker puts in 41.5 hours, making us a nation of slackers by my old boss’s standards.  The hardest workers are found in Colombia, where the average work week is nearly 50 hours, still less than a 30% utilization of available time. 

Like many averages, these numbers hide deeper truths.  There are those who work several jobs in order to make ends meet and others whose employers limit their hours in order to avoid paying overtime.  Much of the available data is based on self-reported hours, and who doesn’t think they work longer and harder than they actually do?  <continue reading>