Whom do you hold in higher regard: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, politicians known for often working from early morning until late at night; or Keir Starmer, the new U.K. Prime Minister, who declared he wouldn’t work past 6 p.m. on Fridays, and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who took a few weeks off after her re-election in June? The answer is an obvious one in America. Busyness and a lack of leisure time have become pervasive status symbols in the U.S. that most people attribute to higher social status individuals.
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Historically, working long hours didn’t generate admiration. In ancient Greece, free men had only contempt for work, while slaves performed labor. In ancient Rome, otium, the Latin word signifying freedom from work and leisure time, was a dear activity to the wealthy Patricians who could happily afford not to work for a living. Fast forward to the 19th century, and the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen proposed that “conspicuous abstention from labor … becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement,” whereas “labor is a mark of poverty and subjection, inconsistent with a reputable standing in the community.” In the series Downton Abbey, Countess Violet Crawley even asks with a curious tone, “What is a weekend?” An upper crust British woman in the early 20th century was too aristocratic to even recognize the concept of a week divided by work and leisure.
What a difference a few decades makes. Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, portrays himself as a workaholic, working 80 to 100 hours per week. Celebrities brag about their busyness and crazy work schedules on social media. In fact, a paper from the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that a century of declining work hours in America began to reverse around 1970, particularly among highly educated, high wage men. Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau also suggests that the highest earners work the longest hours.
Part of this monumental shift is down to the rise of knowledge-intensive economies. Labor markets are increasingly highly structured and competitive, where human capital is one of the most prized economic assets. On the supply side, workers invest heavily in their education and skill development, recognizing that their human capital is their most marketable resource. On the demand side, companies, institutions, and headhunters compete to attract and retain top talent and the best brains.
All of this has helped usher in an environment where long work hours have become a status symbol; a way for individuals to demonstrate their worth. In the past, working hard in economic systems that were mostly based on less-skilled agriculture and manufacturing may have been perceived as virtuous; but it may not have implied an individual was in high demand. But long hours of work and busyness today do.
Returning to the example of politicians’ lifestyles, it is perhaps no coincidence that the first set of politicians are American, and the second set European. There are indeed important cultural differences in how societies esteem and attribute status to busyness and long hours of work. Specifically, a productivity orientation (the chronic concern of being productive, making progress, and achieving more in less time), perceived social mobility, and the belief that hard work leads to success and social affirmation correlate positively with admiring long hours of work. My research finds that these dimensions are generally higher in American society than in continental Europe.
It is intriguing that many people view a busy lifestyle as aspirational and associate it with status, despite the widely acknowledged downsides of an overworked lifestyle on happiness, well-being, and health. Furthermore, working long hours does not necessarily translate into higher productivity.
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Many argue that the pace of life has become so fast that we may gradually return to praising leisure time and admiring slower lifestyles as status symbols. In recent years, many professionals, especially younger ones, are seeking deceleration at work, questioning the pre-pandemic workaholic lifestyles, demanding shorter and more flexible work schedules, and carving out more leisure time. Trends like the “great resignation” and the “leisure renaissance” see Gen Zers bragging about quitting their jobs on social media rather than celebrating promotions.
Could this signal a reversal toward valuing leisure as much as in the past? Considering that I am willingly writing this piece in the middle of summer holidays and supposedly on leave from work, I, for one, certainly hope so.
Yet optimism is not enough and some of these trends may be fleeting. Almost a century ago, the influential English economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advancements would reduce our workweek to just 15 hours by 2028, but that vision is clearly not materializing. As Generative Artificial Intelligence enhances our productivity and efficiency at work, will we use the extra time to enjoy our lives, or will we simply cram more tasks into an already overloaded schedule, seeking a sense of importance?
For our sake, I hope we choose the former.