50 Hour Workweek

Lunch breaks in front of the computer are a growing trend if taken at all. People don’t feel they have time to eat, but the fact is the more intense and demanding your job the more necessary it is to take a lunch break.

This survey, conducted by officebroker.com, which contradicts many New Years resolutions by staff to claw back a better live/work balance, found that the average office worker spent an additional 38 minutes at work each day during the winter months. This equates to more than three hours a week or an additional day and a half per month. Main reasons cited by respondents for working longer hours were to stay out of the cold, avoid troublesome rush hour traffic and ensure all work was completed prior to the Christmas break.

It may come as a surprise to some that when distributed across all American adults (15+, male and female), including weekends, the average American spent just 3.57 hours out of every 24 on work and work-related activities in 2011, according to the BLS' American Time Survey. The number one time consuming activity? Sleep, at 8.71 hours (an all time high for the series), followed by Leisure and Sports with 5.21 hours in second place. The balance of the 6.51 hours remaining?

New school building guidance has allowed this bastion of teachers’ breaks to be axed – and this in a world where so many companies are now understanding the importance of rest and relaxation in the day? I fear this is such a negative and backward step. Even Starbucks in December 2012 stated it was cutting paid lunch breaks, among other benefits it was slashing, and this got me thinking about reinforcing the need and benefits of a break and somewhere to have it during the day.

Last May, French President Francois Hollande reorganized the Elysee to create a new position, the Minister of Transforming Productivity (in French, Ministère du Redressement Productif).  The goal was to make French industry more competitive and efficient. Hollande named Arnaud Montebourg, a socialist known for his capitalist sympathies, to head the post.

In a recent CD post, I argued that we could close the gender-pay gap by closing the gender-hours gap.  Another way to close the gender-pay gap would be to close the "occupational fatality-gap."  For as long as the BLS has been keeping records, females have been significantly under-represented in occupational fatalities, by a ratio of about one female death on the job per 12 male deaths in most years. 

Illinois has combined $137 billion in pension and healthcare liabilities on top of $9 billion in current unpaid bills. Yet, Illinois legislators will not even ask 6-figure pensioners to pick up a portion of their health premiums. The Chicago Tribune reports Surprise! You owe another $54 billion

This statistic is commonly quoted and incredibly misleading. The fake statistic is "51% of Americans pay zero Federal income taxes".They are only referring to 1040 income taxes. They are not referring to the payroll tax (Social Security and Medicare tax). Everyone who works on-the-books pays Social Security and Medicare taxes.