By Emilie Munson
Albany Times Union

ALBANY — Many Americans are working less than they have in years.

The typical U.S. full-time worker now clocks in 41.9 hours per week, an hour-and-a-half less than they did 30 years ago, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

Hours have been falling for both full-time agricultural and non-agricultural workers, according to the BLS. Workers self-report these hours in national government surveys of households, said BLS economist Bruce Bergman.

Also, a rise in part-time labor means there’s a large pool of people working short hours.

"People are working less" declared the headline of a national report issued by the payroll company ADP this year.

At the state and city level, average working hours are down too, but the picture is less clear because the data lumps full-time and part-time workers together, and the numbers are reported by employers based on payroll, not employees who would have a more accurate picture of actual time on the job.

The average workweek for full-time and part-time private sector workers in New York reached its lowest levels in 17 years in February, BLS data shows. In July, it was 32.7 hours, down from 34.6 hours in December 2007. 

In 2019, the New York City Independent Budget Office issued a report highlighting the city’s “incredible shrinking workweek.” Since then, working hours have decreased even further in New York City.

Work has transformed dramatically in recent years with the rise in the “gig economy,” an explosion of remote work during the pandemic and the blossoming of hybrid schedules. A portion of companies have tried to appeal to full-time workers with new schedules that include a four-day week or half-day “summer Fridays.”

As many workers conduct business from their homes and on their phones, some workers have been able to cut back their hours, while others are never really unplugged from their jobs. Counting working hours has become a more blurry and subjective task.

Economist Yongseok Shin, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has studied the national data on hours worked by Americans. Since the pandemic, high-earners in full-time, salaried white collars jobs, particularly men, have been cutting back their hours, especially thanks to hybrid and remote work, he said. Meanwhile, economic data shows low-wage, part-time workers want to work more, but cannot get hired.

When ADP studied the payroll records of private, hourly, non-farm workers, it found a rise in part-time labor and a decline in median hours worked from 2019 to 2023. The trend was particularly strong among women, young adults, highly paid workers and small businesses. Since the pandemic, high earners, in particular, have been able to put in less hours but receive similar pay due to wage growth.

“It’s not apparent whether this decline in hours worked is the result of companies cutting hours or employees choosing to work less,” wrote Nela Richardson, chief economist and head of the ADP Research Institute. “What is clear is that the combination of rapid post-pandemic pay growth and the widespread availability of flexible, hybrid, and remote work arrangements has given employers and employees the opportunity to explore flexible time schedules, which can affect average hours spent on the job each week.”

Data on average hours worked looks a bit different from state to state and city to city, shaped by the industry mix and demographics of each locale.

The average New York City private sector worked punched in at 32.3 hours per week in July, BLS data shows. When it studied the issue in 2019, the New York City Independent Budget Office found despite a decade of job growth starting in 2008, “average weekly hours worked in the city have trended downward over the decade since the last recession — and that the decline has been steeper here than in other large and mid-sized metropolitan areas across the U.S.” 

The report said decline in citywide average weekly hours could be due to a shifting employment sector with an increasing share of jobs in industries with typically shorter work schedules or shrinking workweeks within industries. It could also be a combination of both.

“Sectors in the city with relatively long average workweeks such as financial activities had generally weaker employment growth over the past decade than sectors with relatively short workweeks such as education and health services,” the report found. The report specifically highlighted that home health service employment, which often involves less than 30-hours per week, "has been adding jobs in New York City at a pace unmatched across the rest of the United States."

A few other cities across the state recorded recent drops in working hours, but none as steady and long-running as New York City. However, in Rochester in July, the average private sector work week was even shorter than in New York City at 31.9 hours.

It’s a different story in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro area where the typical private sector workweek has grown longer since 2017 and hovered at 34 hours in July, BLS data shows. Similarly on Long Island, hours were shorter in 2017 than the 33.8-hour typical week private workers recorded in July.

This local data on hours worked reflects the hours that employees were paid for, not any additional unpaid hours they may have put in, for example responding to emails during their personal time, Bergman said.

Adam Bosch, president and CEO of Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, said he interpreted this local data with caution because it’s hard to get an accurate count of hours worked by people now.

“The number of digital leashes we have that keep us tethered to work make it next to impossible to count how much we work,” he said.

A plausible explanation for the decrease in hours worked in New York is explained by more retirees starting part-time jobs to pay their bills and more mothers working part-time due to issues finding child-care, he said. He added he believes labor shortages mean many full-time workers are being asked to work more.

A growing number of people in New York have been working part-time for 35 hours a week or less since 2003, another BLS dataset suggests. That dataset also shows that more people working full-time punched in 35 hours or less a week in 2023 than in 2013, but the number is down relative to 2003.

Shin, the economist, said there’s been relatively little research on hours worked by Americans at the state and city level, so it’s harder to explain the trends shaping the data in these places.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau also suggests working hours in New York appear to be lower than national averages. The census’ American Community Survey found workers between ages 16 and 64 clocked an average of 38 hours per week in New York in 2022; that data does not distinguish between full-time and part-time workers. New York ranked fifth among all states for fewest hours worked per week on average.

In New York, the average hours worked per week has dropped slightly over the last decade, according to the census. Men reported declining hours worked while women recorded a slight increase. 

In the late 19th century, it was common for factory laborers and other kinds of workers to punch in long hours and enjoy only one day — or less — off per week. It wasn’t until 1938 that Congress capped the workweek at 44 hours. A few years later, that dropped to 40 hours, the standard workweek today before overtime. That standard now applies to most American workers, although some, like agricultural laborers, are excluded.

In 1948, the typical non-agricultural worker still punched in an average of nearly 42 hours a week, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows, but time on the job fell consistently over the next few decades, until hitting a low point of 37.7 hours in 1982. Since the 1980s, working hours have remained more stable with more slight rises and dips.

“That’s an anomaly. In Europe, it continued to fall,” Shin said. “The question: is why are Americans working so much relative to Europeans?”

The American Time Use Survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics records how much time people spent on various activities on average each day. That survey found Americans overall worked several minutes more in 2023 than they did in 2013. Men worked a bit less over the decade, while women worked a bit more.

Time spent on household activities, like cooking and cleaning, and caring for children under 6 increased slightly, while time spent socializing, watching television or engaging in leisure or sports decreased by a few minutes for both genders combined.