Obscured by the headline unemployment numbers is an oft-overlooked stat – average hours worked
In rough numbers, average weekly hours worked has declined by roughly 1/2 hour … to 41.5 hours per week.
Couple of interesting aspects to the number …
First, it’s greater than 40 – a standard 5 days – 8 hours work week … suggesting that firms are still using overtime to meet capacity needs rather than hiring … or, folks are working multiple jobs … maybe, 2 part-time jobs.
Second, while 1/2 hour doesn’t sound like much … it translates to over 600,000 full-time equivalent positions, i.e. has the economic impact of pulling more than a half-million FTE workers out of jobs.
The Homa Files 
Leave a comment