[rnk]

This is an interesting article, because I "feel" like my leisure time is less than my parents and grandparents. This is in part because they retired at earlier ages than my current age, with pensions for my grandfather, and better financial situations overall. I feel like I have less leisure time than say people in the 1950s, up to 2000 maybe. But where is the data? This article says for the US, hours worked are around 40/week from 1960 through to 1988 (+/- 1 hour), table 5 https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

It's hard to compare in part because there are very different lifestyles. As a member of the fortunate "programmer class" I have high pay, health insurance, easy job portability. This leads to pretty reasonable vacation schedules, good lifespan. Overwork expectations and stress are the downsides, but these are within my control somewhat and I can just get another job.

This research paper says leisure time increased noticeably from 1965 to 2003 - an increase of 6-8 hours per week for men and 4-8 for women. https://www.nber.org/papers/w12082. This is a surprise to me and goes against my intuition. Maybe we always feel like we are getting a bad deal.

Don't forget the sizable number of lower hourly wage Americans where some people work many hours at low pay and barely support themselves. Americans seem to work significantly more than our European peers https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-product....

[staringback]

Just because someone is paid for 40hrs doesn't mean they are actually doing 40hrs of work. We are both posting on HN during a weekday after all

[rnk]

Hey, I'm compiling! I guess we need a new 2023 joke/true statement. How about "I am taking a break because chatGPT seems to be down". I can't translate that code from Java to Rust by myself.