There seems to be a growing trend these days to work harder and work longer hours than what we may have worked 40 or 50 years ago. 
By this I mean considerably more than say a 38 hour week. We all know that there are plenty of people working 11-12 hours per day x 6 days per week. I have also heard that there are a lot of people, these days, working 50-60 hours per week, Monday-Friday and also taking work home with them on the weekends to stay on top of it all.
Most people seem very busy these days and lots of people are a little stressed due to work pressures and deadlines. Do some of us have enough time for ourselves and our families? If it were possible and if we were to all work only a 38 hour week, would this create more jobs and get more people into work? Should we be getting flexitime or paid days or time off for the hours we work over the 38 hours per week, or do we prefer to be paid for it? Are most people that are working long hours these days doing so because it is an expectation in the job they are in or is it simply that it is not possible to get all their work done in a 38 hour week because so much is expected in most jobs these days.
Another subject that sometimes comes up when friends are discussing their work and working longer hours is the length of time some people are spending in going to work and coming home from work. For those of us that are spending around 1 hour in travel each way and each day in going to work and back-we would find that some of us would prefer to live closer to our work so we could cut down our daily travel time. But this, however, usually comes at a cost. If our jobs for example are in the CBD the cost of properties to either buy or rent will be usually a lot more expensive than those properties that may be around 40 kms out of the CBD . If people decide to pay the extra money to live closer will this then mean that they have to work longer hours to help to pay off this more expensive mortgage or this higher rental expense?
Most people that do work heaps of hours per week generally, you would expect, get paid more than those that work a 38 hour week. So we all have choices to make – such as, “ I know that I am working 50-60 hours per week but the money is good and I need that extra money right now”. And it seems to me to be true that the more money we earn the more we spend – bigger houses or apartments, newer or fancier car, better holiday, better food, going out to dinner more often and the list of more and better things that we can buy never seems to end.
I think that there are also other things that we need to consider here as well – things like in this ever increasingly competitive world that we are living in, where manufacturing is more and more often being done offshore and not in our own country. And this of course is happening all around the developed world – we need to perhaps think about how lucky we are to have our jobs and how are we going to keep them in the future. Let’s face it, none of us want to be out of work – we all need to work to be able to pay for our living expenses, whatever they may be. Finally there are lots and lots of people that love their jobs and get great personal pleasure from their work. For many people work also becomes a large part of their social life. So I think most of us would agree that we all have it pretty good.
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