June 21, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Longer hours at the top?

More than 60 percent of net employment growth during the 1990s was among managers and professionals, jobs in which long workweeks are considered typical.

[Chart data—TXT]

At the same time, many observers seemed to believe that managers and professionals were working even longer weeks than in the past. It is true that a substantial share of these workers put in very long weeks. Nearly 3 in 10 managers and professionals worked 49 hours a week or more in 1999, compared to roughly 2 in 10 for all nonfarm occupations.

However, weekly hours data through 1999 show that the average workweek for managers and professionals had been around 42 hours for the entire decade of the 1990s. If the two occupations are examined separately, their average workweeks remained about unchanged over the past 10 years, with managers working more hours per week than professionals.

These data are produced by the Current Population Survey. More information can be found in Issues in Labor Statistics: Are Managers and Professionals Really Working More? (PDF 16K) (Summary 00-12, May 2000)