| Child pages (Children Display) |
|---|
The short answer:
It looks like the answer is, "It depends".
- In some industries people really only work about 20 hours out of their 40-hour-workweek, but they need to be there the full 40-hours in case something comes up. So depending on your definition of a "20 hour workweek", this may or may not qualify.
- People work for companies or customers (if they're self-employed), and the needs of those companies / customers can restrict the lifestyle of the worker.
-- For example, if someone works for a company which is in a battle-to-the-death with another company for a particular market, the survival of the company may depend on how quickly it can get certain things done; this will in turn depend on how many hours its employees work. So the employees may be compelled to work longer hours by the unavoidable competition that the company they work for faces. When I say "unavoidable competition", I mean that it seems that as long as competition exists between companies, this problem will remain.
-- As another example, if someone is self-employed and has customers, they may be competing with other self-employed people for the customer's business (like on Amazon's marketplace for used goods). Those self-employed people can "bid" for the customer's business by promising to do a better job (ie invest more time into the work) or by promising to get the work done faster (ie work a longer workweek).
- Another thing to consider is that some people are able to work for a year or two in some lucrative job and then not work for a year or more afterwards. Similarly, some people are able to work in a lucrative job and then retire relatively early (in their 30s or 40s). So that's another sense in which the total number of hours worked by a person over their lifetime may go down without necessarily decreasing the person's workweek while they're working (ie they may work 80 hours / week while they're working, but over the total span of the "normal" working years (22-65) the total hours worked divided by the total weeks lived may lead to an average of lower than 40 hours, since the person was able to retire early).
Sites with good information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
http://www.shorterworkweek.com/
How much have people worked at different points in the past?
1968 - Man's Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State (via Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
...