Abstract
Over this century, the average level of weekly hours worked by the labour force as a whole has shown a fairly consistent decline. For example, from 1900 to 1979 weekly hours for the whole labour force fell from 53.2 to 39.6. However, closer examination shows that this decline is largely due to changes in the composition of the labour force, in particular, to increases in the ratio of female to male workers, and in the ratio of white-collar to blue-collar workers. Upon examining a group which has remained relatively homogenous through time, such as production workers in manufacturing, one finds a different pattern. Since 1945, weekly hours for this group have scarcely changed ; in a period of steadily rising real wages it is the failure to decline that must be explained. We attempt to provide such an explanation in this paper.
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