April 27, 2004 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Women work more hours per week than in the past

Women’s average hours at work in nonagricultural industries totaled 35.9 hours in 2003, while the workweek for men averaged 41.6 hours.

[Chart data—TXT]

Although women still worked shorter weeks, women have increased their workweek by almost 2 hours over the past 27 years, while men increased their workweek by less than a quarter of an hour.

As a result, women’s workweeks are now 86.3 percent as long as men’s, compared with 82.3 percent a quarter century ago.

The data in this report are annual averages from the Current Population Survey. For a wide variety of information on women and work, see BLS Report 973, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook. (Data for 2003 are from Employment & Earnings, January 2004. There is a link to these data on the Current Population Survey homepage: see Characteristics of the Employed, Table 19 – "Persons at work in agriculture and nonagricultural industries by hours of work".)