Long Workweeks and Strange Hours

American workweeks are long compared to other rich countries’. Much less well-known is that Americans are more likely to work at night and on weekends. We examine the relationship between these two phenomena using the American Time Use Survey and time-diary data from France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Only small parts of the U.S.-European differences are due to observable characteristics. Adjusting for demographic and occupational differences, Americans’ incidence of night and weekend work would drop by no more than 10 percent if the average European workweek prevailed. Even if no Americans worked long hours, the incidence of unusual work times in the U.S. would far exceed those in continental Europe.