Work More Than 40 Hours a Week? You're Not Alone

Credit: Manczurov/Shutterstock

The 40-hour workweek appears to be a thing of the past for most Americans, a new study finds.

Today's full-time U.S. employees work an average of 47 hours per week — nearly a full workday longer than the traditional 8-hour, five-day workweek, according to the Gallup study.

Overall, more than half of full-time employees work more than 40 hours per week, and just 8 percent work fewer than 40 hours each week, the study found.

Putting in long hours each week is even more common among salaried workers. The study revealed that salaried employees work an average of 5 hours more per week than their counterparts who are paid hourly. Additionally, 25 percent of salaried employees are working at least 60 hours a week, which translates to five 12-hour days a week.

"While workers earning a salary may enjoy greater income than their counterparts who are paid hourly, they do pay a price in lost personal time, Lydia Saad, a senior editor for Gallup, wrote on the research firm's website. 

The research discovered that the traditional 40-hour workweek hasn't been the norm for more than a decade. Despite a slight dip to 45 hours a week 10 years ago, the number of hours U.S. employees work each week has remained pretty consistent over the past 14 years.

However, the long workweeks don't appear to be harming personal well-being, the study found. Saad noted that having an engaging job and workplace have more of an impact on employee well-being than long workweeks do.

"Highly engaged workers who log well over 40 hours will still have better overall well-being than actively disengaged workers who clock out at 40 hours," Saad wrote. "In other words, hours worked matters, but it's not all that matters."

The study was based on telephone interviews with 1,032 U.S. adults age 18 and older.