Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst write that, since 1965,

leisure for men increased by 6-8 hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by 4-8 hours per week (driven by a decline in home production work hours). This increase in leisure corresponds to roughly an additional 5 to 10 weeks of vacation per year, assuming a 40-hour work week.

Without actually reading the article (that would reduce my all-important leisure time), I’ll give my thought about how these results could be consistent with the findings of Juliet Schor about the “overworked American” (following the link from Tyler Cowen’s entry that alterted me to the Aguiar and Hurst article).

Could it be that middle-aged people (such as myself) find ourselves working more each year and taking on more responsibilities, thus perceiving an “overworked American” phenomenon even if it’s not occurring on average. That is, suppose that each of us is becoming a bit more overworked each year, but then at the endpoints, overworked middle-aged people are being replaced by young people with more free time. This would feel like increasing overworkedness for each of us, but on average, the workload would remain the same. (Mathematically, this is just a within/between discrepancy that arises in the so-called ecological fallacy.)

It looks like Aguiar/Hurst and Schor would disagree on other aspects of the problem (not just this statistical technicality), but my point here is: suppose Aguiar/Hurst are right. Then I could see how Schor’s results would be plausible to reviewers who find their own workloads increasing.

P.S. Writing the blog is work, not leisure. But I like my work.