#Less-Worked Americans

[xtruss]

Why Americans Are Working Less

— By Jim Harter | March 25, 2025 | Workplace

Full-time employees in the U.S. have been working fewer hours per week for the past five years. What are the implications for employees and their organizations? And what’s driving the trend?

Gallup finds that average hours worked have dropped progressively since 2019 when U.S. employees reported working an average of 44.1 hours. In 2024, they work 42.9 hours per week.

The decline in hours worked is more pronounced among younger (those younger than 35) than older workers (those aged 35 and older). Between 2019 and 2024, older employees have seen an average reduction of just under one hour per person per week, while younger employees have reduced their hours by nearly two hours.

Over a year, that’s the equivalent of older employees taking an extra week off of work and younger employees taking two weeks. These trends apply to full-time employees working at least 30 hours per week.

Possible Reasons For The Drop In Average Hours Worked Per Week

Several New Findings May Explain This Shift:

Overall employee wellbeing has been on the decline.

Employees now have less trust in institutions in general and feel more detached from their employers.

After a decade of steady improvement, employee engagement has reverted to its 2014 level.

Advances in technology may be making work more efficient. Gallup finds that nearly half (45%) of employees say AI has helped them improve their productivity. However, a workforce that is becoming more technically efficient and less engaged may lack the motivation needed for long-term growth.

Employees -- especially younger ones -- now place a higher priority on their overall wellbeing. In fact, work-life balance and better overall wellbeing now rank among the most important considerations when choosing a new job.

Additionally, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows declines in overall hours worked per person, particularly in industries that traditionally employ more young workers such as retail, leisure and hospitality.

The Connection Between Hours Worked and Employee Burnout

Burnout may be a major reason why employees are working fewer hours. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified “burnout” as a work-related syndrome resulting from chronic stress.

Previous Gallup research has found that an unmanageable workload is one of the contributing factors to burnout. This may help explain why employees report higher burnout (very often or always) as the number of hours they work rises above 45 hours per week.

Leaders And Managers Should View Signs of Burnout As A Red Flag. Employees Who Say That They Feel Burned Out Very Often Or Always Are:

32% less likely to say they feel great responsibility for the quality of products/services their organization offers customers

58% less likely to say their coworkers always do what is right for customers

56% less likely to say their organization always delivers on the promise they make to customers

74% more likely to be looking for another job

In short, burned-out employees are unmotivated to serve customers and perform below their potential.

Gallup finds that the overall work environment strongly influences burnout risk. Employees of all ages who work 45 or more hours per week -- and are either not engaged or actively disengaged -- are at a greater risk of burnout. Younger workers are especially vulnerable, with more than half of those who are disengaged reporting that they often or always feel burned out.

Engaged employees, however, report much less burnout. About one in 10 engaged younger workers and even fewer older engaged employees report burnout very often or always when working less than 45 hours per week.

Although the burnout rate doubles for engaged employees working 45 or more hours per week, 80% of younger workers and 86% of older workers report that they rarely or never feel burned out, even when working 45 or more hours per week.

Burnout Isn’t Just About Hours — It’s About Management

As Gallup has found in previous research, burnout is driven by much more than just hours worked. Other major causes include being treated unfairly at work, receiving unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and experiencing unreasonable time pressure. These are all influenced by how employees are managed.

Organizations that focus too narrowly on hours worked -- and develop a one-size-fits-all “hours worked” policy -- risk missing the mark. Gallup data show that employees of different ages have varying preferences regarding work hours. Some thrive on a steady 9-to-5 schedule, while others prefer a more flexible approach that blends work and personal life. Some may choose to work extra hours to complete a meaningful project or simply because it is their way of excelling at work.

For managers, the key is staying closely connected to each employee, ideally weekly. This helps them support high performance by aligning work with employees’ strengths and accommodating each person’s unique work-life needs.

Create A Low-Burnout, High-Productivity Workplace.

Take immediate steps to improve employee engagement.

Discover how to prevent burnout: Learn what it is, why it matters and how to take steps to reduce it.

Track global wellbeing trends that affect your workplace.

— Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist, Workplace for Gallup and Bestselling Author of Culture Shock, Wellbeing at Work, It's the Manager, 12: The Elements of Great Managing and Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements. His research is also featured in the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, First, Break All the Rules. Dr. Harter has led more than 1,000 studies of workplace effectiveness, including the largest ongoing meta-analysis of human potential and business-unit performance. His work has also appeared in many publications, including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and in many prominent academic journals.

— Sangeeta Agrawal Contributed Analysis to this Article.

[hollowwish]

You guys do realize a lot of watcher fans complaining about the six dollars don't just need to "cancel their disney+ or hulu subscriptions." They're the people who ALREADY can't afford streaming services. It's not that they should be supporting independent creators over big corporations, it's that they literally cannot afford to do either.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Can't wait for the "hot takes" about how Peaceful Property once again ignored the laboring class with Home making Peach clean his house and his wanting for leniency for his aunt and the maids roles in the mansion and Suradech being the one to eat the poisoned meal...as if those weren't all meant to be indicators for us of the deception going on in this episode...an episode in which Uncle Somkid takes the literal foundation of the property from which the Vimarnsukmun real estate empire was begun to assault the member of the family whose working to disrupt it.

[youregonnabeokay-kid]

SO. i was able to figure out the general structure of the script JLH leaked.

[explanation under the cut]

in order for all this to make sense, the first thing you need to know is that in north america all screenplays (scripts) are written in the same format

knowing this, we can deduce the general structure of the scene and even the length of some of the words

first we need to address the big question everyone's been asking:

are they talking about Bobby or Eddie?

screenplays are always typed in courier font, and in courier the capital letters B and E are identical at their left sides.

so while i enjoy people trying to figure out if the blurry letter in line 24 is a B or an E, the answer is it could honestly be either

where we really need to look is line one. the screengrab is blurry so i've outlined the word "going" and circled the area we should pay attention to

at first, the last letter of the prior word looks like an undistinguishable blob, but there is actually one key thing we can discern from it: the letter can't be y, it doesn't hang low enough

there is a chance that the word is not a name and is "he" which would not rule out Bobby or Eddie. however, that would mean the conversation goes on for at least 14 lines without mentioning "him" by name which is (heavily) frowned against in screenwriting. so chances are they're talking about Eddie

also, with what we know about the characters it's most likely Eddie. can you really see Bobby not talking to Buck because of... well, anything? and we already know that Eddie has a difficult time communicating. so i've decided to go with him for this script but haven't 100 per cent ruled Bobby out

moving on to the actual script itself, anything not highlighted in red is something i'm confident is either the exact wording or something similar. the red sections are the parts that i'm less confident in or know are incorrect somehow

Maddie's first dialogue block is the part i had the most trouble with. with context from the following conversation i figured that she probably asked something along the lines of when [Eddie] will be back at work. the main issue with this section is that the top line is actually six letters shorter than what i have written. this also means that the word that follows "going" has to be at least eight letters long. i tried messing around with the dialogue a bit but couldn't come up with something that would fit the appropriate letter count so for now i just wrote a line similar to what i think the actual line probably is

line six has to be either 12 or 13 spaces long and the first word has to be at least four letters long so i used "really soon" as a place holder, but i'm not completely confident in it

for line eight i initially had "Oh, that's good." but the line was one space short so i changed the "Oh" to "Hey" instead. i don't feel too poorly about this one but it still doesn't feel right to me. if the actual script says "Hey" i wouldn't be surprised if JLH changes it to something else or forgoes the exclamation completely

the final line is just a rough guess of what it could be. i'm not sure how formal the 911 writers are with action lines so i just took a random guess. some writers are extremely formal with action lines while others are more comedic with it (Neil Gaiman is a great example of this). i'm guessing the 911 writers are more the former but i honestly have no clue

[artisticow]

genuinely fuck the people blaming "inbred hillbillies" for this shit..... y'all can't condemn bigotry without being bigoted yourself can you?? first we deserved hurricane helene bc we're all racist rednecks who wanna suck trump's dick and now we're also to blame for his presidency.... as if queers and poc aren't a huge facet of the american south. as if atlanta isn't the gayest fucking place around here. how about we blame the fucking corporations and the outdated government and all the old white men still in power instead of turning on impoverished people and continuing the divide of this country. fuck off

[thistledropkick]

So uh... Immediately after Wrestle Kingdom, the big show that brings in both new and lapsed NJPW fans, and Wrestle Dynasty, the AEW crossover show that was intended to bring new overseas fans to NJPW... New Japan management decided to take the only commentary staff member who speaks any Japanese at all off commentary for two months? So the only remaining English language commentator will just not have any clue what anybody is saying during the entire show? Right when a large influx of new English speaking fans is expected? And they're doing all this just as Kidani, who owns NJPW's parent company, was complaining to Tokyo Sports about how NJPW isn't getting enough overseas fans? Have I got that right?

[yippie-stitches]

faggot boots on public bus, yay!

my dad forgot to pick me up from school to get a blood draw so thats fun /sarc

@ch3m1c4l-0r1c-0v3rr34ct10n

[kaurwreck]

I won't promise it'll be okay, regardless of what happens over the next few days, but I can promise the outcome is navigable.

[winter-asleepening]

While I definitely believe/know that religious groups are still not accepting of queerness, I wonder if mainstream (and most likely mostly queer) modern audiences will have the same reaction and relation to the characters and its story.

[mr-aftons-rotting-pussy]

FIFI I WAS LITERALLY DOING POWER SCALING ALL THE CANON AFTONS YESTERDAY WITH SOME FRIENDS

Let's say canon is: Silver eyes (Dave Miller), Gameverse (OG William Afton) and FNAF Movie (Steve Raglan)

Steve Raglan literally sweeps.

Because rewatching the Springbonnie scene, the suit sound s HEAVY. You can hear it in his fucking thumps of him walking that thing is very Weighted

HE COULD FULL TILT RUN AT A GROWN MAN AND THROW HIM ACROSS THE FUCKING ROOM. And the way he walks around in the suit like it was nothing just meandering around and circling, taunting Mike like okay?

And not to mentioned he KICKED HIM and it KNOCKED MIKE OUT FOR LIKE A GOOD FEW MINUTES. And the fact he could just take off and toss the mask to the ground one handed, that thing sounds like it has a weight too!

And when he got Springlocked in the movie he DIDN'T just die. Like he didn't just keel over and die he was TANKING that shit. Yeah it hurt A LOT getting stabbed I imagine but he was still a little bit alive at the end scene, managing to bounce his leg from the pain.

And we haven't even see how Remnant-Pilled Raglan could look

Dave gets springlocked three times, and his third time he dies. He gets points for that but he's literally skin and bones. I think a vegetable could kill him

Games Afton gets springlocked once and he dies. Though he is definitely more healthier than Dave was and he also pranced around the Springbonnie suit fit a good bit. Enough for him to at least feel powerful in the suit. But he did only got locked once and dies. And then gets revived as Springtrap.

That's the gist of my argument that Steve Raglan is not only the strongest Afton, but he could demolish the other canon Aftons in a fight. The other two could team up against him and they'd still lose.

*coughs** OKAY. i see what you are saying, and i get it a little bit buttttt ☝️ i actually think steve and games!will are probably pretty evenly matched.

ill start w dave tho, dave miller i think is probably the least capable out of all of them. he does get the point for durability like you said, but that was also years before his Dave Era. he does also get a little point because he can still operate spring bonnie, tho all of them can do that so its like bare minimum lol. i do think dave would most likely have his ass handed to him, theres just no way id believe he could beat himself in his 'prime' so to speak,,

that just leaves games!Afton and mr Raglan.......... i think mentioning how heavy the suit seemed in the movie as a plus for steve doesnt really work because theres no real way to tell if the movie suit is actually more physically taxing to perform in than the games suits. but also historically the fnaf endos have always been really bulky and heavy looking for ex. fnaf 2 endo

and even in springtraps model though heavily damaged the endo underneath still has this type of... whatever yknow?? and lastly theres no meaningful difference between movie spring bonnie and games spring bonnie, theyre both made and used the exact same way so i think that its safer to say that theyre extremely similar if not the exact same.

and about the springlock thing ermm..... chgjhfgj i mean theres obv theres going to be a difference between how the springlocking is portrayed in a 8-bit minigame vs a whole ass film. and i just dont believe there is a like........ like its a bit of a stretch to me if im being honest, to say steve is technically stronger because he Technically Survived longer than games will...... i guess?????? i mean......... im just not convinced. like they both went down pretty fast, and id even argue that games Will had it worse because like when we see him being springlocked and how that was shown then we see springtraps model like his entire head and everything was stabbed/crushed so it actually makes MORE sense for games will to MAYBE go down slightly faster. compared to steves slow and steady wins the race version lmao..... but also in general the springlocking in both are literally like 1 for 1 of each other, like even to the posing its like one of The Things from the movie thats actually pretty accurate to how it was shown exactly in the games. like its silly but if anything steve is probably more of a little bitch than games will cause he was knocked down completely before his face n everything even had the chance to be mashed potatoes. soooo...... 🤷‍♂️ lmao

and thats why i think Steve and Og William are pretty even matched. Dave Miller is probably going down first, but games n movie r cutting it pretty close.. 😳 dare i say games William probably has a better chance at beating Steve even considering The Lore.

and that last bit...... fhghfhgh im SORRY but i have to disagree 100% 🙈 games will could hold steve to a line in which Dave would have an opening to shank his ass and hed be done for, and then games Will could dispatch Dave from there. in my humble onion 🧅

[look-at-the-stars-tonight]

the amount of effort that goes into figuring out what to cook and eat every day is RIDICULOUS. i used to think people were so weird and boring for eating the same thing every single day but it truly does make life so much easier

[wizardnuke]

some of you are incredibly pretentious btw.

[my-deer-friend]

Hi! I'm interested in dipping my toes into Amrev history and I was wondering if you had any good recommendations that were maybe a bit more in depth than a school textbook but not so scholarly that a beginner could understand them? At least in my experience, I've had a hard time finding books that don't do too much glorifying or mythologizing of the events.

@iron--and--blood

Hello friend!

The difficulty with answering this question is that there are so fucking many books about the American revolution.

There are two books I would recommend to start.

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff (1982, revised 2005). This is an award-winning overview of the whole revolution (not just the war part), and makes for a solid jumping-off point to explore narrower topics.

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (1967, revised 2017). Gets to the root of the thinking and motives that drove the conflict.

These are both fairly old books, but they're classics for a reason, and both have recently revised editions.

After that, you need to decide what you're actually interested in. The battles? The diplomacy? A specific person? A specific place? Slavery? The role of indigenous people? The European allies? The Loyalists? The British? Military strategy? The role of propaganda?

There are books about absolutely everything. You gotta narrow it down.

[jdorian]

how is it 9° that "feels like" 0°?? like, how??

[asteroidtroglodyte]

[American Gods]

The FreeWhale

[inbetween forkfuls of roadside diner hashbrowns smothered in Tabasco sauce and gulps of black coffee with 6 sugars to a cup]

I was doing a late-night jaunt west down the I-10, planning to take the 15 up to Las Vegas to drop some cargo, when I saw this light on the horizon.

Now that in itself isn’t unusual. Construction site, football game, poorly managed corporate parking lot; lots of reasons to see lights at night.

But this light, it blazed. It was too crisp, too close, too dense. It shone whiter than daylight and cast shadows sharp as knives. And as I drew closer I realized that the source of the light was on the freeway itself.

Now I will freely admit that my vocabulary is not the most expansive, but I don’t know if we have a word in English for the thing that cast that light. Machinery is technically correct, but…

Countless wheels it had, with more axles than I got to count and more tires per axle than I’ve seen before or since. 2 double-wide trailers side-by-side, commanding 4 lanes in all, as long as a football field and lit up twice as bright. Carried aloft and suspended between them by a web of hard steel chains was a great and weighty throne, bearing a golden statue of a blood soaked man, flat goggled eyes expressionlessly overseeing the endless road.

Hauled by a team of engines, 16 in all, 4 to a lane and 4 abreast, lashed together like sled dogs of old, billowing clouds of black diesel and blood smoke. Somehow, over the cacophony of wind and motor, I heard the distant screams of the Blood Sacrifice which powered the God Of The Freeway, the bodies of men and women young and old crushed into paste by the ruthless intersection of momentum and inattention in a thousand car accidents each day.

I saw men in high-vis and boot, clambering about the great mechanism like ants upon a tree, adjusting the tension of the chains and the power of the motors, bearing this colossi of weighty momentum and terrible speed along the endless night highways to a destination that would never arrive.

I knew with a sudden terrible clarity that if I remained too near that my own engine would be lashed into service; that the heraldry upon the engines bore the names of defunct shipping companies and dead independent drivers; and that the dreadful velocity of the God Of Freeways would carry it ever westward, far ahead of a sunrise that could never catch it, and so in pursuit of my own life and dawns to come I slowed, and let the God Of Freeways slip over the horizon.

[mariocki]

Mansion of the Doomed (Massacre Mansion, 1976)

"You must trust me. I'm going to give you back your eyes, all of you. Soon. As soon as I've succeeded with Nancy, as soon as I... I discover the truth. I will share that truth with you. For the whole world! I believe in humanity, that's - that's what it's all about."