The Economist.
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9-5 is still alive, sort of.
A new survey of labour force data by Amori Getin of the World Bank and Immanuel Sayers of the University of California Berkeley finds that the world's employed adult population works an average of 42 hours a week.
This number contains multitudes, gender,
age and levels of economic development affect how many hours people work.
Many jobs are not neatly packaged into five eight-hour days, but the 40-hour week is still a norm.
How long people actually work is not the same as how long they ought to.
Jobs, incomes and cultural norms vary so wildly that there is no right answer.
But how you think about the optimal work week does say something about the kind of manager you are.
You might choose to emphasise work-life balance.
A recent research paper by Gregor Jarosz,
Laura Filausoff and Antony Swaminathan of Duke University asked workers in three countries what pay cut or rise they would accept in order to adjust their work week.
In Germany and Britain,
people would be happy to sacrifice some money in return for more leisure time.
The optimal work week in Germany, for example, would last 37 hours.
Americans, in contrast, would like to work longer and get more money.