And yet people in certain European countries and tons of other parts in the world with different work attitudes can have tons of free time, despite having children et al.
From those statistics it does look like the average citizen of the United States probably does work more hours in a year than the average citizen of the EU.
[Edited to remove the comment about "but not by a huge factor"]
If you include all Americans, not just working Americans, the amount of time spent not working has spiked dramatically. Kids are staying in school longer; the labour force participation rate is dropping as blue collar jobs disappear; people are retiring earlier and living longer.
That may not be true that people used to have less time. For example this article: http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/american-worker-less-vacati... state that medieval peasant had more free time than actual american worker. Did they use this time to take drug is another topic though.
Most of the problems being discussed here in this thread regarding work hours per week, commute times, finding time for leisure and exercise and family time, the time spent dropping off kids at school, etc -- there are mostly unique to America. Americans could really learn a lot about how successful you can be despite spending less time at work, as well as less time fretting about other things, by looking at any of many countries on the continent of Europe, who offer a much better work/life balance but with no sacrifice on work output.
Some of the most talented and productive developers I know are in the Netherlands, France and Germany, and have a lifestyle that would be considered impossible by many in the States.
The brain needs time to recharge, time away from "work", time to think about work without actually doing work, and the punch that gets packed into a shorter work day can be much greater if the brain is working at optimum capacity, which usually doesn't happen if it is taxed for loads of hours day after day after day.
For me personally, my best ideas come when I am away from a computer, and my brain is free to wander. The more time I sit at a computer, ironically the less likely good ideas will come. Most work environments in the States have not learned this yet.
I wonder if this is more common in the US where the separation between work and free time is quite blurred. It's seems like you are always working and expect to be always available. Vacations are also minimal.
I think this is why Germany, Sweden and other northern European contries are able to compete: americans work many hours, but are semi-burned out, so the total amount of work are the same, vacation or no vacation.
>like for example giving us enough leisure time to be able to read, have hobbies, do art or spend more time with loved ones.
You say that like it is a universally accepted truth, yet the American worker allegedly takes less vacation time than a medieval peasant[0]. Going even further back, prior to agriculture we likely had even more "free" time[1].
Efficiency is a goal is nice, but the modern work day does not strive for efficiency.
In most cases is not like they (the Americans) have a choice to work less hours. Vacation time in North America is significantly under the European norm.
I wonder if the problem is exacerbated in the US by the lack of guaranteed time off.
That is, European workers (for example) can better fill a 35-40 hour work week because they only have to work ~47 weeks of the year, whereas in the US, many feel lucky to have even two weeks off.
Yes and no, people get stuck in economic traps of paying for things they didn't really need, and those can eliminate all free time. Also, there really is a large group of americans that still work multiple jobs and can't afford healthcare, thats a thing. Some of those are physical jobs, but many are not.
Idk, Americans also spend a lot of time on things that are necessary like that:
Cleaning, paying taxes, commuting, exercise (because most workers don't get it at work anymore), buying and cooking food, taking care of house and car, laundry, etc.
I huge amount of time is spent on those things and that wasn't included in the 40 hours.
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