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April 1997

Trends in hours of work since the mid-1970s

Philip L. Rones, Randy Ilg, Jennifer Gardner

This article examines trends in the average workweek and changes in the distribution of hours worked since the mid-1970s. It also focuses on estimates of annual work hours. Those figures are affected not only by the length of the workweek, but also by the extent to which people work at all, and the number of weeks that they work during the year. Also discussed are differences between hours' data collected before and after the redesign of the Current Population Survey in 1994. Because of the effect of those changes on work-hour estimates, trend data in the article are restricted to the period through 1993.

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