Has the length of a standard work day changed over time in America?

The 8-hour work day started in 1842.
Farmers use to work as long as there was light outside.
People use to work 12+ hours a day.

Interesting that it started in 1842. I meant in more recent times like over the last 100 years, but if it started in the 1800s, where does 9 to 5 come from? I used to hear that phrase all the time as kid. That’s only 7 hours with an hour lunch break.

I’ll have to check on the date, but I’m pretty sure it was started by a union
EDIT: I couldn’t find anything

When I came out of college in 1980, a standard work week was 37.5 hours, which was 8:30 – 5:00. Many office jobs in traffic-prone regions were 9:00 – 5:00 with a half hour for lunch, making it a 37.5 hour week. At the same time, most people started work with one week of vacation, which you could not take until you had been on the job for a full year, and it took 5 years of employment to work up to two weeks, and 10 years to get 3 weeks. These days, most people don’t stay 5 years on the same job, let alone 10 years.

I believe that 9 to 5 started in New York because of the difficulty in getting into the city. In many companies, they assign the work hours depending on the traffic. In Los Angles in the 1960’s there was a meeting among the top employers of that time to help sort out a work day that would alleviate the horrendous traffic problem they were experiencing. It resulted in a staggered work day for the companies involved.

@PandoraBoxx True, but for those who do stay whoo hoo. My husband has been on the same job for 25 years, through five different owners now, and has 5 weeks vacation a year. His work day is nominally from 8 to 4:30, but he is on call 24/7 and usually works an additional 2 hours or more a day at home.

In factories in the late 1800s, people could work 12, 14, 16 hour days. People fought and died for the 8 hour workday.

I hate quoting the Wiki, but they bring together a decent history of the 8-hr day in the U.S. here.

I often work a 10 -12 hour day, and am salaried so I don’t receive extra compensation for working more. Some of the people I work with come in over the weekend to stay on top of their work, or work from at home in the evening.

@PandoraBoxx – do you have a desk job, or do you do something like coal mining or textile mill work? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but desk jobs are a little easier to toil longer hours at, and the 8hr day was largely in response to grueling physical activity.

0900–1700 is normal office hours in the UK, and has been for as long as my immediate family can remember.

I have heard in some places in the U.S. 10–12 hour shifts are becoming a bit more abundant.

I work about 9–10 hours a day but I also usually get an extra day off so I prefer it. I mean honestly I feel work 2–3 hours extra and get a whole day off is better to me.

Because in an 8 hour day I feel my day is pretty much already gone anyways.

And the one hour lunch thing, I did not know that even existed, I have always only got a 30 minute lunch break.

Yeah, what do you even do for an hour?
I wouldnt want to waste an hour sitting at work unpaid.

gimme time to eat my sandwiches and down a coffee and im done, back to work.

@lilikoi I once looked up the laws on breaks and lunches and most states only require a half an hour. I think it is awful. It is not just a military thing. Here is the site on the federal requirement http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/breaks.htm states many times have additional laws.

(Often times it’s an hour if unpaid, and a half hour if paid. This is a very big generality, though.)

Also, I think Yarnady is right that NY was a 9–5 city for the most part. The major cities to the west are in earlier time zones, so it kind of makes sense if you have to do business in the rest of the country to be a little later, although I think of it as the rest of the country as going to work a o’dark hundred and I hate it. 9:00 is nice because it is not pitch dark, and you can see your kids off to school. In Washington DC, many government jobs have flex time (I think you can arrive any time between 7:00 and 9:00?) or maxi-flex (6:00 to 9:00) to help with rush hour, and give people some flexibility.

@laureth Generally, legally, if you are sitting at your desk eating or basically still on duty, like a nurse who eats at the nurses station and cannot really get away, that is a paid lunch by law. If a company pays for a half hour even if you leave the premises then it is probably company policy and not the law. I once worked for a company that gave us an hour for lunch, but paid for half of it.

@all also, there are laws about paid breaks, which are not the same as a lunch break. Like every 4 hours it is required that a person be given a 15 minute break.

In the early forties, my father worked on Saturday mornings, and always took me with him. He was an executive of my grandfather’s little umbrella frame company and felt he needed to let the guys who ran the machines (also working on Saturdays) see him (my father) in situ.

Read The Jungle if you want to know what working conditions used to be like.

Or Dicken’s novels about child labor and the “dark, satanic mills.”