Americans Have Always Worked Hard to Ignore Vacation
Long before the Declaration of Independence, colonists accepted longer workweeks and fewer days off than nations across the globe.
Benjamin Franklin was chock full of such cheery admonitions as “Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy.”
Photographer: Stephen Hilger/BloombergThe official start of summer arrives this Friday. Kids are out of school, and if this were a normal nation, workers would be heading en masse on vacation. But this in the United States, where over half of the nation’s labor force fails to spend the vacation days due to them. And also where workers average more hours a year than every other nation in the world.
It’s been that way for a long time. China’s Jack Ma can brag all he wants about Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s “996” work culture (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week). Japan’s popular television show “I Will Not Work Overtime, Period!” can satirize that country’s reputation for insane work hours. But the U.S. has long been at the forefront of an intense culture of overwork that has persisted, with minor ebbs and flows, for several centuries.