Unpaid Work Is Part of the Norm

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

I conducted a decidedly unscientific survey during the first weeks of April 2021 to see how much people were working.

In the Covid era, I expected to find that at least 40% of people working more than 50 hours a week. After all, working from home makes it easier to extend the workday beyond the typical 40 hours.

Although I expected to find it that extreme, that is not what the survey determined.

Certainly, people are working more than what the United States is referred to as the 40-hour workweek.

44% of people indicated they worked between 40 and 50 hours per week.

33% worked more than 50 hours per week.

What I see from that is 77% of respondents are giving their employer unpaid work for reasons that the poll did not determine.

Some people commented that if you love what you do it doesn’t feel like work. I understand that feeling. I also understand that I love laying on a Caribbean beach even more but don’t make the time to do it very often even pre-Covid.

Again, what I thought was particularly curious was that no one seemed to think of the unpaid work that they were doing for their employer and that they were paid for their efforts, some of the…