Lonnie Golden

Mandatory Overtime Work in the United States: Who, Where, and What?

Who works mandatory overtime? Descriptive analysis of a module in the 2002 General Social Survey finds that 28 percent of full-timers face and 21 percent actually worked extra hours because it was required by their employer—a slight increase since overtime work was last measured twenty-five years ago. Mandatory overtime is more frequent among men, the foreign born, those employed in non-profits, blue-collar occupations, and industries such as public administration and manu facturing. Relative to workers who have no overtime, workers who face mandatory overtime are found more frequently among workers who have inflexible work schedules, seniority, difficulty finding alternative jobs, bonus compensation, and poor relationships with management. Relative to those with non-mandatory overtime, those who work man datory overtime show less job satisfaction, job security, and say about their jobs. Thus, understanding the effects of mandatory overtime has implications for organizations that aim for high-performance workplace structures and smooth labor relations and for labor organizers who seek to attract members by addressing the negative consequences of mandatory overtime, such as heightened work-family interference. While some collective bargaining provisions seek to curb mandatory overtime, their limited effect may be why at least seven U.S. states have passed some form of legal ban and/or right to refuse.

Explaining organizational variation in flexible work arrangements: why the pattern and scale of availability matter

This study examines flexible work arrangement (FWA) availability in 2009 in a sample of 545 American employers. While most employers offer FWAs to some of their workforce, few offer these to the majority of their workers. Those employers that offer flexible work options tend to rely most heavily on flexibility in the scheduling and place of work. Seldom do organizations make options of reducing work and/or pausing work available to majority portions of their labor forces. Industry sector, labor market conditions, and organizational cultural support of flexibility are predictive of wide-scale FWA availability. This study reveals that FWAs remain out of reach for most workers, but that some conditions may foster greater availability.

Average work hours as a leading economic variable in US manufacturing industries

Abstract This paper examines the role of the average workweek as a leading indicator of output and employment in US manufacturing industries. A separate VAR system is estimated for the aggregate, durable, and non-durable manufacturing sectors as well as for 16 of the 20 two-digit SIC detailed manufacturing industries. Each VAR system is comprised of hours, employment, output, and real wages for that sector or industry. Tests conducted for structural change show a structural break occurred after the late 1970s. Granger causality tests and impulse response analysis show that the impact of a given change in average hours on employment and output weakened considerably after the structural break point in 1979. Our results imply that the average workweek in US manufacturing has become less associated with the entire business cycle in both output and employment.

The Economics of Flexible Work Scheduling: Theoretical Advances and Contemporary Paradoxes

A theoretical economic model is developed to explain the disparities in flexible work scheduling observed across firms, workplaces, sectors, and time periods. Given heterogeneity in firms’ costs, the supply of flextime is determined by firms’ costs of enacting versus not adopting it. The innovative practice would be adopted if it generates net unit labor cost savings. If it is cost neutral, the extent to which the supply of flextime falls short of worker demand for it depends on the extent to which employers must accommodate employee preferences for more time sovereignty and are induced by policy incentives to switch to flexible scheduling.

Work Hours and Worker Happiness in the US: Weekly Hours, Hours Preferences and Schedule Flexibility

This research explores the relationship between three different dimensions of work hours with individuals’ reported level of happiness — its duration, mismatch with preferences and flexibility over its timing. Using pooled data from the US General Social Survey (1972-2012) and two of its modules, we find many nuances in the association of the weekly duration of work hours and happiness level among those employed. This includes patterns by occupation, such as managerial-administrative vis-a-vis others, income levels and size of geographical location of work. Working hours just below 40 hours per week tends to be associated inversely with happiness, and also in the shortest hours of work bracket, depending on control variables. Happiness is also frequently lower at the level of weekly hours just above the 40-hour standard. In contrast, working very long hours is associated positively with happiness. However, this is virtually all attributable to the income level of the worker. Alternative indicators of work hours duration largely reinforce these findings. In addition, being underemployed — below one’s preferred workweek, willing to work longer, regardless of hours duration — is consistently associated with reduced happiness level. We offer possible explanations for these “underemployed worker” and “happy worker” effects in the US institutional context. Finally, indicators of flexibility employee-centered, such as setting of one’s work schedule, are strongly associated with greater happiness, robust through all control variables. The findings may provide support for public policies that are intended to curb both the incidence and extent of worker underemployment and to promote a legal right of employees to request and receive a preferred minimum workweek and/or reconfiguration of the duration, timing and flexibility of their work hours or schedule, in the pursuit of individual and national happiness.

Work-Study: Time Use Tradeoffs, Student Work Hours and Implications for Youth Employment Policy

Does paid employment during high school and college displace the time students spend in educational activities? Most enrolled college students in the US now work in paid jobs, almost half of whom work 25 or more hours per week. An economic approach suggests that students consider the tradeoffs involved with work versus study time allocation in terms of both current income and future earnings capacity and well being. There may be some complementarity, not just substitutability, between work and education time, regarding educational outcomes. Previous research tends to find that when paid hours exceed some threshold level, typically somewhere between 15 and 25 hours per week, various indicators of students‘ academic performance are lower. Longer work hours also undermine certain aspects of mental health. This research applies the pooled 2003-2005 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data (n=47k#) to empirically investigate four main questions: (1) Are paid work hours of students associated with time spent doing homework or research and/or attending class? (2) If so, at what threshold point of paid work hours are hours of student work displaced? (3) Are there differences between college and high school students in the above relationships? They are addressed with econometric analyses of the ATUS sample of college (n = 1,314, with 1,121 full-time) students and high school students. (4) Is student employment in certain industries or occupations associated with more time spent studying? Work hours are found to be inversely related to hours in educational activities among those aged 16-24. Moreover, there are nonlinearities by the number of actual hours. In contrast to previous studies and samples, students who work as little as 5 or more hours spend a statistically significant lesser amount of time studying than their cohorts who are not employed. The extent to which work displaces time spent studying is consistent across levels of weekly work hours, but becomes largest when hours are 40 or more, even when controlling for various demographic and occupational characteristics, but not time spent in class. The conclusion explores how to investigate whether students who work during the school year have a relatively lower well being, as indicated by available estimates of net affect associated with particular uses of time? It also explores implications for policies, such as extending youth employment regulatory protections to students if it is warranted by clear threats to their mental or physical well being.

Work Schedule Flexibility: A Contributor to Employee Happiness?

This article contributes to knowledge regarding determinants of happiness by examining the independent role played by having discretion over one’s working time, using data pooled from two years of a nationally representative US survey. Controlling for a worker’s income bracket and work hours duration, having work schedule flexibility in the form of an ability to take time off during the work day and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to vary starting and quitting times daily, are both associated with greater happiness, whereas an ability to refuse overtime work is weak at best. The associations are generally stronger among workers paid by the hour than by salary. Worker utility functions thus may be enhanced by including the timing and flexibility of working time. Policies and practices that promote more employee-centered flexible working time may not only help workers alleviate work-life time conflicts, but also promote worker well-being generally, especially among hourly-paid workers.

Work sharing as a potential policy tool for creating more and better employment: A review of the evidence: New Developments and Beyond

‘Work sharing’ is a labour market instrument devised to distribute a reduced volume of work to the same (or similar) number of workers over a diminished period of working time in order to avoid redundancies. This fascinating and timely study presents the concept and history of work sharing and explores the complexities and trade-offs involved in its use as both a strategy for preserving jobs and a policy for increasing employment.

Distinctions between Overemployment, Overwork, Workaholism and Heavy Investments in Work Time

Contemporary labor economics has focused far more on preferred labor supply, and much less on whether workers are able to get the hours they truly desire, or that even when one’s labor supply could be considered voluntarily provided time and effort, it could lead to unanticipated adverse consequences on their own well-being. Industrial-organizational and occupational health psychology has focused on this latter issue of negative well-being consequences, but less so on the difference in the extent to which situational labor supply is entirely voluntary versus at least partly involuntary. The emerging issue of “heavy work investment” re-frames the issue of the motivations behind labor supply preferences as having short-term costs but often with potential longer term payoffs (Snir and Harpaz, 2012). The purpose of this chapter is to consider why at least some people are driven to work longer hours beyond their initially preferred extent of time commitment, defined as “overemployment,” and perhaps beyond their own capacity that is sustainable in terms of physical or mental health or well-being either, referred to as “overwork.” The first aim is to display a comprehensive model of work hours determination. This employs recent behavioral economics’ emphases on relative status, aspirations and preference adaptation and process benefits. It emphasizes how work hours may be a forward-looking (and also a backward-looking) form of investment for a potential return in future well-being, in the form of income or perhaps non-income amenities at work. It explores the role of incentives, explicit and implicit, in determining a worker’s preferred number of hours. The former refers to extrinsic motivation, such as a monetary bonus for extra production. The latter involves intrinsic motivation, such as public recognition or title with status, for performing extra work. It then goes on to focus on overemployment, the inability to reduce one’s work hours toward preferred shorter hours (and not just a shift in daily timing of a given duration of hours), despite a willingness to sacrifice some pay, which amounts to 18 percent of polled workers in the US. It makes subtle but important distinctions between being overemployed with being overworked or workaholic.

Happiness is Flextime

We study how working schedule flexibility (flextime) affects happiness. We use a US General Social Survey (GSS) pooled dataset containing the Quality of Worklife and Work Orientations modules for 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. We retain only respondents who are either full-time or part-time employees on payrolls. For flextime to be associated with greater happiness, it has to be more than just sometimes flexible or slight input into one’s work schedule, that is, little flextime does not increase happiness. But substantial flextime has large effect on happiness–the size effect is about as large as that of household income, or about as large as one-step increase in self-reported health, such as up from good to excellent health. Our findings provide support for both public and organizational policies that would promote greater work schedule flexibility or control for employees.