This man is not in touch with the world the rest of us live in
Jeb Bush thinks we as Americans need to work longer hours. That is not a joke, he really
said it.
"My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in."
So as a guy who between a full-time job and freelance writing works somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 hours a week. I thought I would try to figure out how much the American public
already works.
A report that Gallup released [in August of 2014] showed the average time worked by full-time employees has ticked up to 46.7 hours a week, or nearly a full extra eight-hour day. Just 40 percent of Americans who work full time say they clock the standard 40 hours a week. Another 50 percent say they work more than that.
The problem isn't that we need to work more, it is that our employers need to hire more workers so that we aren't working an extra seven hours a week! Overtime certainly is not the answer.
What about sick time—maybe we all spend a lot of time out of work sick using all of that paid time off we get for illness. Is that it? Come below the fold to find out.
Hmmm ... well, only 61 percent of us even get paid sick leave. So that can't be it, and according to the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
The availability and costs of the most common leave benefits, paid holidays, and paid vacations remained virtually unchanged from 1992–1993 through 2012. Instead of more generous holiday and vacation provisions, other leave benefits such as sick leave and personal leave have shown more growth. In addition, a new type of leave plan has become more common, consolidated leave, which is now available to approximately one-quarter of all workers.
So it isn't like we have been given a lot of extra time off over the last 20 or so years. But, maybe, just maybe, we
take too much vacation:
A new study has found that U.S. workers forfeited $52.4 billion in time-off benefits in 2013 and took less vacation time than at any point in the past four decades.
American workers turned their backs on a total of 169 million days of paid time off, in effect "providing free labor for their employers, at an average of $504 per employee," according to the study.
Okay, so we like giving our employers free labor, but we all have a ton of vacation time to take if we want it,
right?
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick leave or federal or other holidays. These benefits are matters of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative).
Well, employers must give us vacation time just because they know a well rested employee is a
good employee.
The average American worker is entitled to 16 days of paid leave. But the length of the average vacation lasts just over four days!
Only 25 percent of workers say they take all the time off that's due them (Glassdoor Employee Satisfaction Survey). In fact, 15 percent of Americans report taking NO time off.
And 61 percent of us admit to doing some work even while we're ON vacation
So that 16 days is a lot
right?
In France workers are given 31 days of paid time off.
Japan: 10 days.
Italy: 31 days.
Canada: 19.
More than a quarter of the American work force gets NO vacation time.
I think we can be pretty sure that it isn't the amount of time off we take that Jeb is talking about. So just what could Jeb possibly be thinking about? We already work a lot of overtime and many of us
work multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
Maybe the problem is that Jeb Bush has never really held a real job where he had to punch a clock, sit in a cubicle, or stand on a factory floor all day. He has no idea of how much Americans actually work because he has never been in a position where his mortgage or rent payment was dependent on working more than 40 hours a week. He has never sat down and talked to real Americans, the ones that struggle everyday to pay their bills, put food on the table, and save a little bit at the end of the month. The problem isn't that Americans don't work enough. We work too much, and don't get enough pay for our labor.
Jeb, I will make a deal with you: Let's trade places for a month. You get my bank accounts and my paycheck for a month. I will run for president and get your bank accounts and your paychecks for a month. I am betting you don't last a week on what I make, and the hours I put in.