A Half-Century of US Labor Data Shows Steady Retreat From Evening and Night Work
- Reference: 0180827736
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/19/182207/a-half-century-of-us-labor-data-shows-steady-retreat-from-evening-and-night-work
- Source link:
The share of the workforce on the job at 11PM, for instance, fell by over 25% from its 1970s level. Economists Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh argue the primary driver is rising real incomes -- night work is essentially an inferior good that workers avoid as they earn more. The wage premium employers must pay for undesirable hours has grown by about three percentage points over the period.
One sector bucked the trend: retail, where the rise of big-box chains, 24-hour Walmart supercenters and overnight distribution center restocking pushed more employees into late-night and early-morning shifts. The Covid-era surge in telework, rather than spreading work across the day, actually accelerated the concentration into prime hours -- especially among college-educated workers. France showed a similar pattern of daytime compression over 1966-2010, but the U.K. did not, likely because rapid de-unionization there eliminated the union wage premiums that had made night work comparatively attractive.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34732/w34732.pdf
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
People are realizing that, if you work for someone else, the only reward for working extra hard is more work.
If you're going to really bust your ass, do it for yourself. Otherwise just do what's required to get paid well. Put in your 8 hours and then call it a day. Let some other poor sucker work a bunch of unpaid overtime just so they can get a 4% raise instead of the usual 3%, which works out to much less than fast-food level wages on the extra hours.
Well, no kidding (Score:3)
Grocery stores and Wal-Mart trimmed their hours for COVID and never restored them. We are definitely no longer on the 24-hour society trajectory we were on in decades past.
Re: (Score:2)
> Grocery stores and Wal-Mart trimmed their hours for COVID and never restored them. We are definitely no longer on the 24-hour society trajectory we were on in decades past.
The summary actually claims retail did not follow the trend and shifted more labor towards late-night hours. So, if the article is accurate, labor isn't the reason Walmart never restored 24-hour shopping.
They could be closed overnight to reduce shrinkage, or it could just be one of those weird boneheaded corporate America decisions that doesn't make any sense but they do it anyway.
Erroneous Conclusion (Score:4, Interesting)
> ...argue the primary driver is rising real incomes
Nope, for two reasons:
The first is that incomes for jobs where night-shifts are commonplace have not risen in line with inflation, so real incomes in this sector are down.
The second is that most of the traditional night-shift jobs are, or rather were, in large-scale manufacturing, where shutting down a production line for the night is both problematic and costly. Over the period in question, production has either moved overseas or the products themselves have simply become irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
GF's mom in high school worked nights. Manufacturing. Wrecked havoc on the poor woman. Dad had a day job. I think she had OT on weekends fairly often as well. I think maybe whirlpool if I remember right.
The reason for that is the changing type of work (Score:5, Insightful)
It has a lot to do with the type of work people are performing. In Manufacturing, machines and plants are a big investment, and to get a better return on investment, you want to run them as often and as long as possible, leading to shift work. Some plants can't even be easily powered down like furnaces, and shift work is a necessity.
But most people in the U.S. are working in Services. Here, 9 to 5 jobs are much more common, because the tools are not the highest investment, but the education of the workers, who in turn are working only one shift per day. Additionally, a lot of the work is performed in contact with customers, which are also working in Services, and which are also on a 9 to 5 routine.
With more and more people working in Services, less and less people are working night shifts. [1]https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/19/182207/a-half-century-of-us-labor-data-shows-steady-retreat-from-evening-and-night-work#
Another factor, worldwide workforce (Score:2)
I think another contributing factor, specific to business that provides 24/7 support, is that it's now easier than ever to have call centers in multiple countries, everyone working "normal" business hours, but still making good on their 24/7 coverage. Of course, a lot of those call centers are now exclusively in places like India, so the 24 hour shift work has just been outsourced, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that if you're doing certain jobs, such as inventory management or truck duties for a retail store, that has to be physically done on site . It's not even something one can do sitting at home, never mind remotely done by somebody sitting in Noida
night shifts are objectively brutal (Score:4, Insightful)
For almost everyone, working the night shift is brutal on your health. It messes with your sleep, circadian rhythms, mood, hormones, blood sugar, healing, blood pressure, and pretty much everything else. And not in a good way. I had a primary care physician doctor friend who told me that, if a night shift worker started getting pre-diabetic, there was almost no way they could avoid progression to type 2 unless they stopped working nights. If he had a prediabetic patient that couldn't get excused from the night shift work, he would offer to recommend them for disability as an alternative.
Some things absolutely must run on a 24/7/365 schedule, and small numbers of people do just fine with a flipped schedule. For most of us, it burns our lifespan at a much faster rate than day work. We should let AI and the robots take care of the night shifts.
Re: (Score:2)
> Some things absolutely must run on a 24/7/365 schedule, and small numbers of people do just fine with a flipped schedule.
If you're predisposed to being a night owl, the worst things about it are meeting obligations of daywalkers who can't comprehend that no, 8AM is not a good time , and that Walmart now closes at 11PM.
I'd bet that the negative health effects of ignoring your circadian rhythm probably goes both ways - if you're a night owl and forced to work a crack o' dawn schedule, that's absolutely miserable, too.
Re: (Score:1)
> We should let AI and the robots take care of the night shifts.
But they don't switch off the robots in the morning. Ask the doctor about the life expectancy of homeless people.
Nice (Score:1)
Everybody who got a gunshot wound has time to wait until 9PM until then next shift starts.