Gen Y drives time away from the office



By Stephen Lunn    

Full-time workers are spending less time at their jobs now than a decade ago, reclaiming nearly two weeks a year for themselves.

While farmers continue to spend the most time at work, averaging 50.9 hours a week and unchanged from 2000, the rest of us shed an average 1.3 hours from our working week between 2000 and this year, a report shows.

Led by Generation Y, who no longer try as hard for promotion early in their careers as 20-somethings did a decade ago, and older workers taking their foot off the pedal, average full-time weekly hours are now 41.4 compared with 42.7 in 2000, according to Bankwest’s Working Times report, to be published today.

“We were expecting to find we’re all working longer hours, so in that sense it was very surprising,” Bankwest business chief executive officer Ian Corfield told The Australian.

“It was Generation Y that most surprised me. I thought like all of us they’d be putting in the hours early in their careers to drag themselves up the greasy pole, but they seemed to have looked at the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers and taken a message they were a little too obsessed with getting to the top and making money,” he said.

Under-25s, at 39.1 hours, were the only age group where full-time workers averaged less than 40 hours a week, while those aged between 35 and 54 did 42.2 hours.

West Australians had the highest average at 42.2 hours (down from 43.3 in 2000), while the ACT averaged 39.2 (down from 41.2).

Mr Corfield said many people felt they were working harder because new technology let them take work home and be more accessible to bosses outside hours.

But fewer people were doing really long hours, the report, which analyses Australian Bureau of Statistics data, finds. Those working more than 60 hours a week, many of whom were business owners, fell from 13 per cent to 11 per cent across the decade, while the proportion working 35-39 hours a week increased from 20 per cent to 23 per cent.

Farmers were the longest workers, followed by miners. Government employees worked the fewest full-time hours.

“Farming is one sector where some of those improvements in innovation and technology over the decade don’t equate to a reduction in working hours,” Mr Corfield said.

Farmer Malcolm Starritt, who runs sheep and grows cereal on his property along the Murray River near Moama in southern NSW, says it’s no surprise to hear farmers work long hours, given he can stand on his doorstep, look in any direction and see a job that needs to be done.

“In the past 10 years, we’ve all had to increase the area we farm or the amount we produce to remain competitive, with significantly fewer staff,” Mr Starritt said.

“It’s sink or swim, and when you have successive bad years there’s very little safety net for farmers. So you’ve just got to work long and hard, otherwise you go broke.”

The downward trend in full-time hours was halted last year by the global financial crisis and the resulting pressure on job security, the Bankwest report shows.

“If the economy improves, I think the long-term downward trend will come back,” Mr Corfield said. “But if it continues to struggle, people will again put in the long hours, especially those with a small business.”

Article from The Australian, September 27, 2010.