Working Hours
Many of us grew up hearing about a 40-hour work week, what constituted full-time work at an employer. Often, that full-time status meant benefits like health insurance were provided.
Obviously, those of you running a farming operation are already laughing…you would love to only work 40 hours a week, with holidays off.
More recently, an employee who works 32 hours a week qualifies as “full-time” for government trigger purposes.
I came across information that was posted on line from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, based on the average weekly hours of all private employees, including those working part-time. The data does not include government employees, those on the farm, or the self-employed.
The average number of hours worked this year in Iowa is 33.9 hours per week. The state with the most hours worked was Louisiana, at 36.3 hours.
So in none of the 50 states was anyone close to averaging 40 hours per work week.
For comparison, all of Iowa’s neighboring states were in the 32 or 33 hour weekly range, with Iowa having the largest number, at 33.9.
Delaware was at the bottom, at 32.4 hours.
I find this all very interesting, although I am not at all sure what to make of it. We need workers in this state. I know how many hours I put it, and it’s well about the state average, although as a salaried person, the data may only show me at 40 hours. But nationally, this either means we have a lot of folks working part-time…or the work-life balance so many talk about has slid too far in the other direction.
