1. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
1
Do
workers
work
enough?
International
comparison
of
working
hours
and
wage
disparities
Malte Nyfos Mathiasen

2. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
2
Table
of
Contents
Abstract
..........................................................................................................................................
2
Introduction
.................................................................................................................................
3
Research question
.........................................................................................................................
5
Literature
review
........................................................................................................................
6
Work
and
leisure
concepts
..................................................................................................................
6
Economic
explanation
...........................................................................................................................
8
Legislative
explanation
.........................................................................................................................
9
Institutional
explanation
......................................................................................................................
9
Empirical
evidence
..................................................................................................................
10
Conclusion
and
discussion
...................................................................................................
13
Literature
...................................................................................................................................
14
Abstract
The paper reviews existing literature on working hours and historical trends
since the 1970s for selected OECD countries with a focus on the United States. In
United States there exist data showing that the hollowing of working hours especially
happened for the middle and lower deciles of the population.
I investigate some of these results related to the hollowing of the middle class
in other country cases and arrive to the conclusion that cross-country comparison with
fever cases and more detailed national dataset might be advantageous to consult to
move forward with research on the relationship between working hours and inequali-
ty.

3. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
3
Introduction
John Stuart Mill foresaw in his ‘Principles of the political Economy’ from
1848 that the economy would soon approach a ‘steady state’, where needs would be
met and working time reduced. Bertrand Russel praised idleness and time for more
existential matters, such as art. Bourdieu studied leisure as a way the social and cul-
tural higher classes could distinguish themselves, and Hochschild studied how people
outsourced and commodified work, which generations before would be considered
domestic work or even just human activity. The boundaries of work and it’s meaning
have object for many conversations, but maybe most famously the economist Keynes,
predicted that his grandchildren’s generation only had to work three hours a day, and
in this style there has been many voices to tell us that the structure of working hours
might change fundamentally (Sullivan, O., & Gershuny, 2001: 7f). Many economists
have stressed the significance of technology and inventions, such as the Industrial
Revolution and today’s computerization and automatization, which can make jobs
that used to be integral part of society obsolete. In the last years this have sparked a
vivid discussion for the future work, where infamous economists such as Lawrence
Summers, Paul Krugman and Robert Gordon argue for the possibility of the end of
growth, while Bryjolfson and McCafee emphasize the opportunity to invent new mar-
kets (2012). On the short run this might lead to a loss of working hours in some indus-
tries or occupations, and in the longer run it can create a need for restructuring and
retraining of the workforce and work at such.
Another economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen also emphasized the so-
cial nature of consumption in The Theory of the Leisure Class. He invented the con-
cept of the Veblen good, which is a good, where decreasing prices decrease people’s
preference for the good, because the status of the good decreases. Applied to working

4. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
4
hours one might expect to find a Veblen effect, when the cultural status of leisure,
working hours and consumption changes Recently, economists such as Schor (1998)
and Bowles and Park (2005) have used applied his theory to account for working hour
disparities across OECD countries, which they find are unexplainable by incentive
effects.
There exist no correlation between high GDP or growth countries and longer
working hours. In fact, many developing countries have higher working hours but low
GDP and thus can be characterized as unproductive (Lee et al., 2007: 33). The rela-
tionship between high- and low-income countries, and their legislative, institutional
and economical structure might differ substantially and mediate the effect on working
hours differently. Therefore, I will only focus on selected OECD countries, which
tend to be more similar and the analysis can therefore partition out some of the under-
lying historical and structural reasons that make parts of the world very. Consequent-
ly, my analysis is only valid for the selected OECD countries and can to some extend,
all other being equal, be extrapolated to similar OECD countries.
In the European Union since the 1990s goods, capital, services and people
were guaranteed free movement. The internal labor market in the European Union
have increased the supply of labor and puts pressure on the wages and working hours,
especially as national restrictions were overruled in the 2000s and as a consequence of
the financial crisis and in the Western and Northern Europe with general higher wag-
es. The increased pressure on wages and working hours might be observable as a lag
of the flattening of average working hours in the 1970 U.S., which first is observable
in 90s EU. Contrastingly, Schor argues that the decline in American’s leisure is a de-
viation from the European trend. This invites investigations of the relationship be-

5. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
5
tween working hours and wage disparities across different countries and income
groups.
Research question
How have weekly working hours evolved differently for high and low income employ-
ees in high-income nation states since the 1970s and which parallels can be drawn to
wage inequality?
The relationship between working hours and wage disparities is very disputable, but
Fligstein and Shins findings below in figure 1 intrigue the paper at hand.
Figure 1 U.S. distribution of working hours (Fligstein & Shin, 2004: 415)
Fligstein and Shin find that working hours have stagnated for the 1st
and 2nd
hourly wage percentile in the period of 1977-2001. For the 3rd
to 7th
decile working
hours increased only in the 1990s but mostly follow the pattern of the 1st
and 2nd
per-
centile (though the data might conceal working hour differences from the 3rd
to 7th
decile), while working hours have increased from 44 to 46 hours for the 8th
and 9th
decile from the same baseline as the other deciles. We can here assume that high-

6. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
6
income earners in the 8th
and 9th
decile mainly are managers and professionals. These
findings indicate that working hours especially tend to decrease for low wage worker
and their jobs become obsolete. But the findings are not complete and can partly be
explained by a very peculiar history of the hollowing of the middle class and emer-
gence of part-time on a need based jobs and service sector workers, who might expe-
rience other and new demands. Nevertheless, their findings are innovative and an in-
ternational approach can investigate, whether their theory is applicable in other coun-
tries. I therefore address my research question with an international comparison and
ask:
Have the distribution of working hours evolved differently in other developed nation
states?
Literature
review
The review starts out by describing some of the general concepts of working hours
and relates it to the chronology in the United States. Thereafter, I elaborate an eco-
nomic, an institutional and a legislative explanation, which I tend to find representa-
tive for my reading and assessment of the literature on working hours.
Work
and
leisure
concepts
Leisure is often treated as a residual of the time where workers do not work
and sleep. The amount of working hours therefore affects leisure very directly. Where
leisure tend to be hard to define, because the boundaries between work, social life and
leisure can be vague, working hours have a more clear and almost legalistic defini-
tion, as it is only the time you should be paid for at work (REFERENCE). Thus, work
that is not commodified, eg. domestic work, historically mainly handled by women, is
not put into the equation. This might explain why some developing and traditional
countries annual working hours are relatively low, because the work of women is not

7. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
7
quantified. There also exist a division between workers, who are paid by the hour or
paid a fixed monthly or yearly salary. Some are paid to work overtime and some are
expected but not compensated. Therefore, I believe it might be reasonable to claim
that not all working hours are included, but the definition should include paid work
that are just ineffective or idle.
Another definitional question is whether to calculate working hours on a year-
ly or a weekly basis, and whether to include people only in employment or everyone.
To best represent how work is experienced at the workplace I find that people only in
employment better captures work as it is, for the people who work. The difference in
weekly and annual records consists in the amount of holiday and paid vacation a
worker obtain. Thus, it is both an effect of cultural, legislative and political frame-
works.
In the following I try to use annual records for people in employment, since
these data are most complete and easiest to compare between countries.
Juliet Schor describe how Americans in the late 80s were working 169 hours
more than in the late 60s, and if they had to reach their 1973 standard of living in pur-
chasing power, they had to work 245 more hours or 6 extra weeks yearly (1991: 81).
Hout and Hanley argue that the increase primarily comes from women entering the
labor market and women work 300 hours more (2003). The emergence of the dual
income family seems to be maybe the largest restructuring of the latter part of the 20th
Century labor market and thus affects the labor market substantially by raising the
supply of labor.
Since the Industrial Revolutions in 1870 to 1970 working hours have halved
from 3000 yearly to approximately 1500 hours.
From 1850 to 1987 annual working
hours have decreased from to half the amount according to Schor (1991: 45f). Though

8. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
8
many other scholars believe the historical data is very unreliable and tends to be less
reliable all the more we go back in time, it is to a commendable estimate, which have
resonated through academia. The newer tendency seems to be that working hours in-
ternationally seems have flattened since the 80s, though it still slightly decreases
(OECD, 2014).
The changing distribution of working hours among middle class blue-collar
jobs and management and professional white-collar jobs impact the hollowing of the
middle class through declining salaries since the 1970s. The hollowing of the middle
class is one of the most significant restructuring of work, which has widened the gap
in income disparities. The working hours affect this trend in the US by exacerbating
the disparity in income, because the high-income group both can take higher hourly
income and more hours, which not is option for manufacturing and service sector
workers, who hardly can maintain their working hours.
Economic
explanation
A classical economic way to understand working hours is to see it as a trade-off
between the employees’ relative preference for leisure time and higher earnings. In
this model countries with lower working hours tend to have an average preference
towards fewer working hours. OECDs evidence display that there is a correlation be-
tween a preference for leisure time and lower working hours, but it is very difficult to
prove that it is a causal relationship, and the preference existed before the disparity in
working hours. Another version of the argument is one that integrates differences in
real-wages. The middle class in some European countries might balance working
hours and leisure time differently than in the United States, because they by far less
work can afford the same consumption patterns and status. The social services and

9. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
9
welfare system also vary from one country to another and mediate how much workers
decide to work and spend to maintain their social status (Schor, 1991: 23f).
Legislative
explanation
In many European countries paid vacation is either mandated by law or agreement
and constitutes four to seeks weeks off work (1991, Schor: 82)
Weak legislation in the US with no maximum for overtime hours can undermine the
statuary limit of 40 hours a week. Either strong inspections with arbitration and fine
could enforce the legislative practice, or the legislation itself could harsher penalties,
which did not consolidated incentives for employers to demand or expect workers to
stay for overtime work.
Compt time in the U.S and flexible working hours in a European context also
challenges the boundaries of working time and the work-life balance for families, alt-
hough it is sought after both by workers and employers. In general there is an imbal-
ance, where workers of high status seem to enjoy work more and desire work flexibil-
ity. Whereas lower status work often is physically tough and worker want stability
rather than flexibility (Ilsøe, 2007, 2010).
Labor and business’ history in some European countries also make them not
only bargain over wages but also working hours and set rules hat with or without gov-
ernment enforcement can maintain trust and compliance (Westergaard-Nielsen, 2008
19).
Institutional
explanation
The density of labor union and their capability to influence politic and work-
place activities influence wages but also working hours. The employer have incen-
tives to make workers work longer hours, as they then create more surplus value for
the shareholder and profit for the managers (Western & Rosenfeld, 2011; Lin, To-

10. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
10
maskovic-Devey, 2013). Hacker & Piersson describe the development since the 70s in
the U.S. as a hostile takeover by business, where influence by labor has been sup-
pressed (2010).
The globalization tend also to rise the supply of labor, as employers now can
move production and profit to a country, which have lower wages and maybe higher
working hours, and where the country’s government have a positive attitude towards
the company and do not pass on strict regulation (Freeman, 2006).
Veblen also describes the capitalist system as a system of conspicuous con-
sumption (1899), pointing in the direction of what other scholars have conceptualized
as a norm of growth economy, prosperity and consumption culture of today.
Empirical
evidence
There are no easy accessible way to cross-tabulate income defiles and working hours
over time. EUROSTAT, ILO, World Bank and OECD all provide aggregated data.
One step forward, which would take some time and maybe acquire researchers of dif-
ferent nationality, would be to link national datasets for different income deciles with
working hours.
I selected Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, United King-
dom and the United States to have developed OECD countries similar to the United
States but also include regional variation with Japan, Australia and European coun-
tries and to have variation in capitalism and institutional and legislative welfare re-
gimes. Canada, Australia and United Kingdom are also selected, because they are
most similar and share some culture, language and institutions.
The data is retrieved from OECD and I have used the variables ‘Decile ratios
of Gross Earnings’ and ‘Average annual hours actually worked per worker’ from
1970 to 2012. Some data is missing, e.g. OECD only has data from Germany since
1991 and Greece since 2005.

11. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
11
Figure
2
Figure
3
Figure
4
1200
1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
2100
2200
1,2
1,4
1,6
1,8
2
2,2
Working
hours
5th/1st
decile
Working
hours
and
5th/1st
income
decile
ratios
Australia
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
Japan
United
Kingdom
United
States
1200
1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
2100
2200
2
2,5
3
3,5
4
4,5
5
5,5
Working
hours
9th/1st
decile
Working
hours
and
9th/1st
income
decile
ratios
Australia
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
Japan
United
Kingdom
United
States
1200
1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
2100
2200
1,4
1,6
1,8
2
2,2
2,4
2,6
Working
hours
9th/5th
decile
Working
hours
and
9th/5th
income
decile
ratios
Australia
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
Japan
United
Kingdom
United
States

12. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
12
The trend line in figure 2 and 3 point in many different directions and indicate
that there are countries were lower working are associated with less inequality, and
countries were lower working hours are associated with higher inequality.
For figure 2 Germany distinguish itself by being fairly below average working
hours but move a lot towards more inequality in the period. In contrast the United
Kingdom seems to be the most stable country over the period for the 5th
/1st
decile.
For the 9th
/1st
decile there is an observable shift for Canada and United King-
dom that contrast the tendency for the 5th
/1st
decile. Here they tend to have larger ine-
quality as the working hours decrease. For Denmark and the United state, the coun-
tries with respectively the lowest and highest inequality rate, the trend appear to be
the same, so that lowering working hours led to larger inequality ratio.
The tendency in figure 4 is very clear. All countries indicate a decrease in
working hours and an increasing ratio in 9th
/5th
docile, thus in contrast to figure 2 and
3, all countries here have a negative trendline. As for graph 2 the United States have a
very long and flat trendline indicating a relative large shift in ratio for the 9th/1st dec-
ile from 3,7 to 5,2 and the 9th/5th decile from 1,9 to 2,4, which as been well empiri-
cally and theorized before, show how the 9th decile or even a few percent within the
9th decile (as the 99 % campaign but also scholars have argued) really have moved
from the rest.

13. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
13
Conclusion
and
discussion
All countries move in a direction towards less working hours, though the rig-
orousness of the data are complicated by changing boundaries of work and leisure and
as new groups of worker, e.g. the women enter the labor force.
The covariation of decreasing working hours and rising inequality is observa-
ble in all the selected OECD countries but particularly evident, when we look at the
top and the middle class. This finding confirms Autor (2010) and others, who have
theorized the hollowing of the middle class. In this context one solution could be to
guarantee the working hours and supplied consumption pattern with an insurance or
policy framework for an exposed group of today’s working population. A possible
policy could strive to better distribute working hours among the whole population in
the long-term.
The problem with concluding anything stronger and argue for a connection on
the basis of eight OECD countries is that the period since the 70s have been very pe-
culiar for the selected countries. E.g. the United States has experienced a unique de-
cline for the middle class and a technical and global development, which still today is
difficult to evaluate quantitatively and richly contextualize across countries.

14. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
14
Literature
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Routledge.

15. Professor
Annette
Bernhardt
Soc
280E
Malte
Nyfos
Mathiasen
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
15
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