OPINION:
The intensification of work doesn't seem to be making us richer, but it does appear to be making us sicker.
The idea that technology can liberate us from the drudgery of work is a powerful one. It has also been a powerful disappointment, at least so far. Many bemoan the fact that John Maynard Keynes thought we could all be working a 15-hour week by now. But it is not just about working hours. The nature of work also seems to have changed in the past three decades. In spite of — or perhaps because of — new technology, people now say they are working harder to tighter deadlines under greater levels of tension.
The best evidence for this comes from the UK, where large government-funded surveys conducted every five years show rising "work intensification" since the 1990s. The proportion of employees who "strongly agree" their job requires that they work "very hard" increased from 30 per cent in 1992 to 46 per cent in 2017. The share who say they work to "tight deadlines" for at least three quarters of the time has increased from 53 per cent to 60 per cent. And the share who say they work at "very high speed" for at least three quarters of the time has swelled from 23 per cent to 45 per cent.
What is striking about this trend is that it's happening to everyone. "It's not just the Amazon production line person who's had their work intensified, it's the London commuter and the new solicitor," says Francis Green, a professor at UCL who has studied the phenomenon for years. According to an analysis by the Resolution Foundation think-tank, just over two-thirds of employees in the top quarter of the pay ladder said they worked "under a great deal of tension" in 2017. The same was true for half of those in the bottom quarter for pay, but this latter group has experienced the biggest increase in tension since the 1990s. Studies have found work intensification among managers, nurses, aerospace workers, meat processing workers, schoolteachers, IT staff and carers. There is also evidence of work intensification in Europe and the US.