Emerson is pastor of Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and, like increasing numbers of Americans, his workweek easily exceeds the traditional 40 hours. That's more than the Germans, more than the French and more than the notoriously workaholic Japanese. It's probably safe to say, at the very least, that Americans feel as if they're working more. A minority are even consciously cutting back. In the evenings, he attends board meetings and makes house visits.
Experts attribute the steady rise in American work hours to several things.
Women are putting in more hours on the job. In a booming economy, there's more work to be done. Employees are trying to keep up with new technologies. Corporate job cuts have left fewer people to do the same amount of work, notes Joyce Williams, chairman of the department of sociology and social work at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. And for hourly workers especially, she suggests, keeping up with the cost of living means working overtime or working more than one job.