I've got the stats... but first, a quote from an old book: "You promote the guy who takes his problem home with him."
So wrote William Whyte in his 1956 book, _The Organization Man_. Harold Rosenberg expanded on that in a review, observing that for the commercialized intellecual: "You hire the guy who takes his problem to bed with him." Two momentous demographic changes have taken place in the U.S. workplace since Whyte and Rosenberg commented. The participation of women in paid work has risen dramatically as has the academic credentialization of employees. There are other momentous changes but those are the two I'm looking at. From 1969 data, it is obvious that both gender and years of schooling are highly correlated with weekly hours of work. For the employed population, men worked longer hours, women worked shorter hours and the hours of work increased with years of schooling completed. Jumping ahead 35 years to 2004, what do we find with the hours of work? For the population as a whole, there was remarkably little change in the percentages in each time slot (1 to 5 hours, 6 to10 hours, etc.). Broken down by sex, there were changes in the distributions that when added together virtually offset each other. So the total gives a picture of DEAD CALM over a 35 year period (I also included 1987 as a midpoint). In my opinion, it's the dog that didn't bark. What I mean by this is that if the weekly hours actually worked were economically motived by the requirements of the production process there would likely have been a substantial change in the overall distribution. Instead, their very immobility suggests that they function more like a notational system for a position-holding hierarchy, i.e., promotion follows from conspicuous consumption of hours at the office. What does this have to do with sex? I'll answer that if someone can just explain to me what such time serving has to do with the "work ethic." Tom Walker 604 255 4812
