The BLS defines full-time as 35 hours. That means the average person works part-time. 
Average Weekly Hours vs Year Ago
- Total Private: 34.2 Down 0.2
- Manufacturing: 40.0 Down 0.1
- Construction: 39.2 Up 0.1
- Production and Nonsupervisory: 33.7 Down 0.1
- Retail Trade: 29.5 Down 0.3
- Leisure and Hospitality: 25.3 Down 0.4
Total private down 0.2 hours may not sound like much. However, total private employment is 161,864,000. That works out to 32,372,800 hours.
At 34.2 hours per person, that is 946,573 employees.
Note that the rebound peak was 35.0 hours. Figure that’s millions of Leisure and Hospitality workers down from a workweek of 26.6 hours to a workweek of 25.3 hours.
But hey, we are still adding jobs, at least according to the BLS.
Small Businesses Reducing Workers for the Last Five Months
Also see my ADP report Small Businesses Reducing Workers for the Last Five Months
ADP data shows small businesses with 1-49 workers have been reducing workers for five months.
Government Employment Rose by an Amazing 785,000 in September
In case you missed it, please note the BLS says Government Employment Rose by an Amazing 785,000 in September
I am confident something (many things?) went totally nuts in BLS sampling or assumptions, and the economy did not suddenly add 785,000 government workers in September.
As I high school math teacher, I instruct 3 x 95-minute classes, and I have a 95-minute planning period. I spend about 20 minutes a day grading & 10 minutes making copies, so I work about 5.25 hours a day or 26.25 hours a week. I do have the occasional mandatory professional development meetings, e-mails to send & respond to attend, or meeting with parents. When averaged out, this adds maybe 5-10 minutes a day to my work week.
I only work 178 days a year. Based on an 8-hour workday for those 178 days, I make $64 an hour and my county contributes $21,120 a year to my pension. I also make another $5,000 coaching. In season adds another 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for about 4 months. Makes for long days, but it’s very rewarding extra credit time spent with student-athletes.
No complaints here, especially since my job is very recession proof. We took about a 5.5% pay cut during the GR. No worries. It’s for the greater good.
nice to see honesty here.
Don’t forget public school teachers have some of the best and lowest cost to you medical insurance in the country.
Look at your W-2 box 14code DD……..Thats the employer cost of the medical insurance . Then substract out what you pay and the difference is what your employer is paying. So additional job benefit.
I have seen that difference to be over $25,000(yes25k, the DIFFERENCE) in NYS teachers W-2
having said that, teaching is a noble profession and deserves a higher than average pay.
I just get pissed off about the medical insurance but then again most people in the country have no idea the true cost or value of their own medical insurance, they only complain about what they pay. meanwhile the remaining cost their employer pays is 300% to 400% more of what they are paying.
Zero.
I survive on government dole and investments.
I’m curious what the median is. My guess is it would be lower.
Also curious how they accounted for people with multiple part-time jobs. My guess is they combined their hours, but it would be good to verify.
“I am confident something (many things?) went totally nuts”
It’s called election interference
I work an average of 5 hours a day as an independent contractor but make more than I did compared to when I was an employee. I also enjoy the work much more.
i’ve been working 3 days per week, for 2 hours each of those 3 long days, for 29 years, now. my career, on purpose, since i was a young puppy, was going to be based, NOT on an hourly rate of work-like activities.
It fluctuates quite a bit, since I so called retired. I would say on average 15 for pay, and 10 for helping others.
I was in IT … so I worked 50 – 60 hours/week on average for 35 years. This included 8 to 10 week spans where we were working 80+ hours/week. So 34 hours/week … that’s a week with 2 or 3 vacation days I assume
Age 72, healthy, 0 meds/prescriptions and not fat, or even slightly overweight… 5′-10″ 150#… How much do I work,, self employed and all the time,, I love accomplishing things, saying I designed that, I built that, I helped that person, I provided that customer great service… If I sat around the house I would start to deteriorate after 3 hrs… One of the great things about working more is the compounding effect… If you, the average Joe, are doing 35 a week and I’m doing 60+, I’m getting ahead of average Joe a little bit more every day,, and I’m gaining experience and knowledge quicker than he is. Not to mention I have more assets, more tools, more equipment.
Some people seem to be very good and very happy at sitting around or just laying in the sun. I’ll never understand that. Me, I need to be doing something, accomplishing something. There is no work-life balance for me. Work is life, and I love my life…
70 or so
There’s a saying: Europeans “work to live” and Americans “live to work.” This is reflected in the differences in per capita income. Americans can afford a number of extra toys and bigger cars (get them SUVs pardner!) because of this, but the work-life balance suffers accordingly.
— Greg (my blog: dark.sport.blog)
I was always a work to live guy. I don’t see Americans as a happy group, overweight, physically lazy, stressed and many with no exit ramp from a miserable life. Work is like alcohol addicting but it makes one sick and unhappy.
This is another reason to love Mish Talk. I never would have concluded what is shown in this data. I used to work with a woman who worked 80 hrs per week. That tracked for the 10 years I knew her. I felt 50 was fine for my work life balance. Field of service was healthcare.
Would have to work 25 hours a day to afford a property that I could get for 8 h/d just 20 years ago.
I can believe 785,000 jobs. They’re all in the IRS.
The increase in government jobs was +31,000 from the Establishment survey which accounts for actual paychecks from employers. The “785,000” was from the Household survey from a relatively small sample of households. That latter data is intended to show rates of unemployment – which can be estimated from small samples – and the BLS makes clear the first is to be used for employment level data
This info is easily found online
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ces_cps_trends.htm
Add in the extra admin staff in hospitals and other make work jobs running the diversity hire programmes. Put Elon in the next Trump admin and let him do to government employment what he did to Twitters bloated staff numbers.
Myself I consider any week with under 60 hours a quiet week. The more hours I do the faster I can pay off the mortgage.
If my employer demands me go into the office to keep the pleather seat warm? 8 hrs per day minus 2 hrs travel.
Work from home days, 10-12 hrs per day.
I’m 0630-5PM M-Th, and usually 6-8 on Friday and late some other nights, so 48-50 hours on average on site.
Interestingly our non-union folks are now required to show in the office for 7 hours on Monday & Tuesday, with another 7 hr “day of choice” on Wed-Fri. Most are quite upset about this.
One Engineer claimed his ADD health issues afforded him an ADA exemption from this “coming to work” nonsense. We’ll see how that pans out for him.
My work is “light blue” collar. I’ve been able to work from home at times and I find it very pleasant!
I can very easily lose track of time and put in overtime when working at home. Some view that as beneficial. Personally, burnout became an issue.
Work for pay? Zero. I’m retired.
Work to maintain things, including me? What counts as work? Does laundry count? How about canning applesauce? Maybe three hours a day on average.
Last year I repainted the house, my average would have been higher.
Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door – that way Lumbergh can’t see me, heh – after that I sorta space out for an hour.
Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
They fired me years ago, but because of a software glitch I keep getting a paycheck so I show up to work and pretend I’m working.
another truth teller. bravo.
Skewed distribution. Average below 35 but median above. not same as median.
5 hours per week. I do about an hour of actual work per day as my career winds down. Retiring early next year.
40 on the nose, with a few days each year outside of the normal 9-5 routine for seasonal/annual projects and special events. Not giving away my most precious resource at all easily, not if I can help it.
Precious bodily fluids?
I’m old. But when I worked, I worked between 55-65 hours per week every week in order to get the work done, and done correctly. It was my name on the company, so the work had to be correct.
Early in my career I worked eighty hour weeks. I figured I couldn’t be more intelligent than the competition so I would put in the hours. I was half right. Now I don’t work at all.
I am surprised the numbers aren’t lower because many people opt to do things like Uber, DoorDash, etc. instead of working traditional jobs like flipping burgers 8 to 5 or whatever hours. Then there are the “entertainers” on things like Tiktok, Youtube, Onlyfans, etc.
Then the remote workers that move to the Caribbean or overseas but work remotely in the U.S.
As for how many hours I work, I work as many as needed to get stuff done. Sometimes its 10 hrs in a week other times it’s 80 in a week, the old 40 hr work week will soon become a dinosaur of the past. I don’t think re-shoring will work long term unless there is massive immigration reform to get fresh meat to throw into the labor meat grinder.
you sound honest. i’d suggest, david Graeber, the late great anthropologist’s book, “BS jobs, a theory”. my kids gave it to me after decades of hearing me tell them i had a BS job, like most white collar finance pros, have.
“The BLS defines full-time as 35 hours. That means the average person works part-time.”
Everyone whose job is not simply to maintain a heartbeat, works part time….
Anyone so clueless and useless that they make up some arbitrary distinction between nominally “working” 34hr and 35hrs; and then goes on to “explain” manners of supposedly meaningful economic properties based on that arbitrary distinction; is simply not worth paying any attention to at all. They ARE dumber and less economically literate than any dishrag at least I would accept hanging in my kitchen.
I don’t know. Seems to me if individuals are working less hours with employers hiring more people to maintain the same total output, that is something worth discussing when talking about real employment numbers.
I’m 7 -5 daily. no lunch break and then a couple hours on the weekend. So over 50.
Probably the best measure would be tax receipts.
Including home maybe 45
I’m around 55-60 hours a week, Mish…But I’m a manager, on call, and on salary.
How does anyone qualify for a mortgage?
In other words, how can these numbers possibly be true?