The decline of worker hours in America

 In 1966 all the hours worked by all the full time and part time workers divided by the civilian employment level peaked at about 35.35 hours per worker per week. That's full time level work. That's prosperity.

The flood of Baby Boomers, especially Baby Boomer women under the influence of feminism and the social revolution of the 1960s, and also foreign born workers after the Immigration Act of 1965, into the labor markets after the mid-1960s reduced hours per week per worker by almost 11%, not forming a new stable bottom until the 1980s at about 31.5 hours per week.

Increased labor supply = fewer hours to go around = less prosperity.

By 1999, when peak Baby Boom had passed 40 years of age, hours per week had risen as high as 32.68 per worker per week. That was the end result of the good times kick-started by Ronald Reagan twenty years prior, which hit in four waves: 1984-85, 1989, 1995, and 1999.

But the whole subsequent period 2003-2019 inclusive fell apart.

Many, many troubles reduced hours worked per worker by almost 7% between 1999 and 2009, not the least of which were admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the Great Recession.

Hours per week per worker have risen again as of 2022, but only to the old bottom, at around 31.57 per week.

Median real earnings per week are up just $38 since 1979.

Will that be As Good As It Gets?

 

 

 

Biased Neil Swidey article in Boston Globe never tells you how the Democrats' Immigration Act of 1965 flooded the country with non-Europeans

He just slides right over that part of the history, here, and never mentions Operation Wetback under Eisenhower, either:

In 1850, 9.7 percent of the US population was foreign-born, according to the Pew Research Center. By 1890, it had jumped to 14.8 percent, spurring Hall into action. In 1920, though, that figure began its steady drop, and by 1970 it had plummeted to 4.7 percent.

By 2015, fueled largely by surging immigration from Latin America, it had rebounded to 13.7 percent, nearly the same level that Hall had found so intolerable at the start of his crusade.

But you can figure it out from this graph, which clearly shows the flood in (non-European) immigration after 1965: