Related BLS programs | Related articles
October 1998, Vol. 121, No. 10
How hours of work affect occupational earnings
Daniel Hecker
Analysis of long-term trends in hours of work has shown that a large proportion of full-timers in some major occupational groups put in long hours, and that persons working long hours generally have higher earnings.1 Do the high earnings associated with longer workweeks simply reflect the greater number of hours worked, or is there a more basic difference between jobs that demand (or encourage) long workweeks and those that do not? In an article in the April 1997 issue of the Review, BLS analysts Philip L. Rones, Jennifer Gardner, and Randy E. Ilg noted that professional and managerial workers had both higher earnings and longer hours than did workers in other occupational groups, and suggested that some of the earnings difference might be due to the considerable responsibility associated with professional and managerial jobs. This article takes a more in-depth look at the relationship between hours and earnings, with a focus on detailed occupations.
This excerpt is from an article published in the October 1998 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
Read
abstract Download full text in PDF (99K)
Footnotes
1 Philip L. Rones, Jennifer Gardner, and Randy E. Ilg, "Trends in hours of work since the mid-1970’s," Monthly Labor Review, April 1997, pp. 3–14. See also G.H. Moore and J.N. Hedges, "Trends in labor and leisure," Monthly Labor Review, February 1971, pp. 3–11.
Related BLS programs
Employment Projections
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
Related Monthly Labor Review articles
Has
wage inequality stopped growing?—Dec. 1997.
Reassessing trends in U.S. earnings inequality.—Dec. 1997.
Earnings mobility in the United States, 1967-91.—Sept. 1995.
Effects of intermittent labor force attachment on women's earnings.—Sept. 1995.
Earnings in the 1980's: an occupational perspective.—July 1994.
Gender-related shifts in the distribution of wages.—July 1994.
Job-related education and training: their impact on earnings.—Oct. 1993.
Trends in wage and salary inequality, 1967-88.—June 1992.
Recent gains in women's earnings: better pay or longer hours?—July 1990.
Within Monthly Labor Review Online:
Welcome | Current
Issue | Index | Subscribe
| Archives
Exit Monthly Labor Review Online:
BLS Home | Publications & Research
Papers