Work, Worship and Play

According to Wikipedia, the average American currently works about 42.9 hours a week with 16 days of vacation (and the top two income classes worked more than 50 hours a week), which means the average worker in America works 500 more hours than the average German a year and has 14 days less vacation than someone in Denmark.

Looking over the course of American history, it may or may not surprise you that the 19th Century was extremely taxing with the average worker in manufacturing putting in over 60 hours a week (no wonder unions blossomed). And farmers usually have worked a good number of hours ("from sun up to sun down"). However, with farmers, there is the added issue that their work was once done on the homestead - perhaps softening the overall number of hours worked because of the close affinity between work and home.

It was not until the 20th Century that the American work week seemed to settle into the current expectation of 40 hours (with a brief dip into 30+ hours during the depression). There's also some more good stuff and stats here.

Work Weeks, Supply/Demand and Market Forces

If you make it to the end of this article, you'll discover an interesting section discussing Supply/Demand and other market forces that affect the work week. For instance, if your workers are working 90% of the day that is great for supply, but terrible for demand ... or, in other words, no one has anytime to enjoy the wonderful new motorcycle coming off the assembly line. Here's a good summary of the thesis:

"Holding everything else constant, [companies] would like employees to work long hours because this means that they can utilize their equipment more fully and offset any fixed costs from hiring each worker (such as the cost of health insurance -- common today, but not a consideration a century ago). On the other hand, longer hours can bring reduced productivity due to worker fatigue and can bring worker demands for higher hourly wages to compensate for putting in long hours. If they set the workweek too high, workers may quit and few workers will be willing to work for them at a competitive wage rate."

Work and the Family

The above study also noted an interesting case at Kellogg's Cereal where too short of a work week led some workers to bemoan the extra time spent at home - leading to more fights since the men were always "underfoot all day."

Then again not having anytime for family or at home is also detrimental. Thankfully, there are some efforts to carve out space away from work and for the family - including an effort from Take Back Your Time and Panera Bread.

The Great Blah

One of my seminary professors once quipped that the problem with modern culture is that we worship our work, work at our play and play in worship. Boundaries between work, worship and play are ridiculously ambiguous (if at all present).

Nowadays, work is both nowhere near as rigid and confining as it was in the past but also more accessible and pervasive than ever imagined. Cell phones erase the rigid boundaries once associated with industry; wireless access blurs the line between home and office. Technology has both liberated and further restricted us.

Meanwhile, play has moved outside the normal boundaries of a Saturday activity and swallowed up whole weeknights and weekends.

And then there is worship. At first glance, there seems to be a good, strong trend of Christians in America who are learning that their faith impacts much more than their Sunday morning - worship, thankfully, is becoming a way of life, not an event to attend. However, the flip side of this new trend is that places and seasons/times for worship are rapidly disappearing - under the assumption that such places and times are no longer necessary. Yet, without appropriate places or periods for worship, there is just as much chance that secular dominates sacred as the opposite happening. And, there may be an even greater chance of individualism dominating community without proper boundaries.

Not that life ever really affords us tremendously clear, pleasant lines to keep our lives sane and happy, but ...

It is good to stop every other week or so and wonder, where do I work, where do I play, where do I worship? And have I got the equation all mixed up.