Aug 31, 2014 4 min read

Labor Day came into being near the end of the 19th century – Pennsylvania was one of the first states to put it on its calendar – as a way to celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers. In the words of Peter J. McGuire, a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, it was a holiday for those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

While there will be assorted parades and picnics around the country today, for most people, Labor Day is summer’s last hurrah, a way to sneak in one more day to laze by the lake, fire up the grill, take in a baseball game or scoot out of town before the fall’s serious business of school and work gets under way.

And the truth is, most working-age Americans could use the day off.

We occasionally hear from people who say Americans have gone to seed. Rather than being the hardy, self-sufficient strivers from days of yore, we have become slothful “takers” who would rather loll on the couch and wait for a handout. We have to wonder if these people have, in fact, been visiting an America in some parallel universe. The relatively threadbare nature of our social safety net aside, particularly in comparison to Canada and Western European nations, Americans have been punching the clock in recent years with dedication and urgency.

Many studies have shown, on average, we work longer than our counterparts in Germany or Britain, and even Japan, where workers have occasionally been known to succumb to “karoshi,” which roughly translated means “death from overwork.”

White-collar workers can now be tethered to the office after hours thanks to laptops, email and texting. Our days are longer, we leave more vacation time on the table and retire later. Last week, a poll released by Gallup found the majority of full-time workers in America now put in about 47 hours per week, with 39 percent saying they toil 50 hours per week.

In the wake of the Great Recession, many workers have to make ends meet with two or three part-time jobs rather than the single full-time job that once provided for life’s necessities. Those part-time jobs usually come with few or any benefits. In many households, two paychecks are now needed where one would once do the trick.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. As recently as the 1960s, many prognosticators optimistically predicted advances in technology would create a brave new world where the workweek would be greatly reduced and our most nagging problems would center on how we would use the abundance of leisure at our disposal. A Senate subcommittee peered into its crystal ball in 1965 and saw 14-hour workweeks by 2000.

They probably also believed traffic would no longer be an issue because of jetpacks.

Going back even further, in 1930, evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley stated “when we reach the point when the world produces all the goods that it needs in two days, as it inevitably will, we must curtail our production of goods and turn our attention to the great problem of what to do with our new leisure.”

What Huxley failed to see is the amount of goods we “need” is just about endless. If we have a house, after a couple of years we want a bigger one. Cars break down, computers go on the fritz, television sets become more dazzling, and on and on. Consumption is what makes the economy go ’round and keeps us on the treadmill.

So enjoy this day off. Your nose will be rubbing the grindstone again soon enough.