Americans playing harder, working less: Study

Contrary to popular belief that Americans are workaholic, they now bask in extra leisure time at workplace.

Stressed-out, vacation-deprived, workaholic Americans who put leisure-loving Europeans to shame have never worked so hard and played so little.

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That popular perception -- grist for hundreds of magazine stories, newspaper articles, TV news reports and casual chit-chat -- is being debunked by new academic research.

In terms of leisure time, it turns out Americans have never had it so good, escaping with up to a full work day's worth, or eight hours a week, of extra leisure time than they did four decades ago.

Men are doing best, with between six and eight hours more time off, while women are enjoying four to eight hours more free time per week than in 1965.

"The amount is huge, because we have gained a work day in leisure in the last 40 years," said University of Chicago professor Erik Hurst, co-author of the study with Mark Aguiar, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The research, which will be of interest to macro-economists and those who track how taxation policy affects how much people work, finds that the sector of the US population with the greatest rise in leisure activities is men with lower levels of education.

Some observers believe that much of that may be unwanted leisure brought on by job losses in traditional heavy industry and manufacturing.

Hurst acknowledged that unemployment could be a factor driving the results, but he stressed that the study did not measure life satisfaction, merely how long people were working.