Recent data shows that young men are leading the workforce in reducing the number of hours worked.
According to a new study from Washington University in St. Louis, the average number of hours worked has been falling since 2019. However, men in the top 10% of earners were found to have logged 77 fewer hours of work last year, equating to around 1.5 less hours per week.
These younger men are typically defined by hustle culture and often expected to be workaholics, but economics professor and coauthor of the report Yongseok Shin says that since men typically work longer hours, they have more opportunities to trim back.
In comparison, the same bracket of women reduced their work time by 29 hours last year, or around half an hour each week.
In 2022, the U.S. workforce logged 18 fewer hours as the pandemic caused a massive reevaluation of professionals’ priorities. This was particularly prominent amongst men with families according to the American Time Use Survey, which found that married men worked 13 fewer minutes each day.
“These are the people who have that bargaining power,” said Dr. Shin. “They have the privilege to decide how many hours they want to work without worrying too much about their economic livelihood.”
