Overwork in America

There is little question that the way Americans work and live has changed in recent years. The
fast-paced, global 24/7 economy, the pressures of competition, and technology have blurred the
traditional boundaries between work life and home life. Furthermore, this new economy calls for
new skills—skills like responding quickly to competing demands and jumping from task to task. In
response, the topic of being overworked has become a hot subject of discussion in workplaces, in the media, in medical journals, and in homes.

In 2001, Families and Work Institute conducted a seminal study to define and measure the impact of being overworked on employees and employers. Among the reasons we began to investigate this phenomenon were the following:

• Studies by Daniel J. Conti from Bank One and Wayne Burton from Northwestern Medical School first published in the 1990s found that depressive disorders within the workplace were much higher than anticipated and were associated with the highest medical plan costs of all behavioral health disorders.1

• In 1999, The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) stepped forward to report that because the nature of work is changing at whirlwind speed, perhaps now, more than ever, job stress poses a threat to the health of workers, and in turn, to the health of organizations.2

• In 2000, the World Health Organization reported that by 2020, clinical depression was expected to outrank cancer and follow only heart disease to become the second greatest cause of death and disability worldwide.3

• In Ellen Galinsky’s 1999 nationally representative study called Ask the Children, when asked their one wish to improve how their mother’s and father’s work affected their lives, most children wished their mothers and fathers would be less stressed and less tired.4

Our 2001 study on feeling overworked revealed that 1 in 3 U.S. employees experienced feeling overworked as a chronic condition. We were also able to identify some of the factors that lead to being overworked and understand some of its consequences.