Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Nonfinancial Corporations Sector: Hours Worked


Click to enlarge.



Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Nonfinancial Corporations Sector: Hours Worked

7 comments:

Rob Dawg said...

Reported/compensated hours worked. Americans would crap if their government allowed them to see how some workers lived vice vacation days.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

Vice Vacation:

Dennis Kozlowski

Tyco paid $1 million (half of the $2 million bill) for the 40th birthday party of Kozlowski's second wife, Karen Mayo Kozlowski. The extravagant party, held on the Italian island of Sardinia, featured an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David urinating Stolichnaya vodka and a private concert by Jimmy Buffett. In a camcorder video, Dennis Kozlowski states that this party will bring out a Tyco core competency – the ability to party hard. Subsequently, this shareholder meeting/birthday party became known as the Tyco Roman Orgy.

Rob Dawg said...

Germany 1400hr/yr
US 1800hr/yr

Ten weeks!

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

I was up at 2500+ hours when I was working, at least when I enjoyed my job. (I once worked 30 hours straight to get a product out the door on schedule).

Have no fear. I was salaried. Although I still had to fill out a time sheet, the company didn't have to pay me extra.

I wasn't bitter about the time sheet though, even when my review came up and I was told that I'd been claiming the minimum 40 hours per week. Middle management knew I worked far more than that but 40 didn't look so good in the eyes of upper management apparently.

Did I mention that I was salaried? How about the part where I wasn't bitter?

It's all good. I quit not long after it was pointed out that my time sheet was suddenly being used as a performance indicator. It hadn't been for many years and then it was. Just one more sign of a company in decline, kind of like when they locked the supply cabinet as a cost cutting measure. In hindsight, nearly every measure they implemented backfired in one way or another. Morale dropped at a much faster rate than savings piled up. Without morale, productivity dropped.

I'm not bitter though! The job went from fun to hell hole. So many layoffs, so little time. Unfortunately, I kept surviving the cut. Had to cut myself, lol. Sigh.

I quit 14 years ago. That job haunts me. Every now and then I'll still have nightmares over it.

Sustainable Gains said...

That chart looks even better when normalized to population. Doesn't even need a 10-year smoothing:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=mSg


P.S. Glad you realized that when management could see the cost of everything, but the value of nothing, that it was time to go out and find new cheese. We are nearing that point where I work, so I have begun to look...

Stagflationary Mark said...

Sustainable Gains,

That chart looks even better when normalized to population.

Define better, lol. Sigh.

Gallows humor.

Stagflationary Mark said...

You might find this amusing.

I debated the General Manager on my last day. I said that the employees didn't seem to be a top priority any longer.

He replied (paraphrased from memory), "Of course employees are the #1 priority, it's just that other things are more important right now."

After a long moment of silence, he conceded my point. He was wise to do so. The silence was deafening. I'm a patient person and therefore was willing to continue it for as long as it took, lol. Sigh.

Is it any wonder I still have occasional nightmares? I burned a few bridges out the door. I'd do it again but I'm an introvert generally trying to avoid confrontation. Some things just need to be said though.

The day I quit another lead software engineer opted to quit. We'd both been there about 8 years. Neither of us knew the other was planning to do it. He called me that morning and told me that he had the top news of the day. I told him that I did. HR found our shared news story "very disconcerting". No doubt!