PRESS RELEASE

Nova Scotians Working Longer Hours To Make Ends Meet

Overtime, “Junk Jobs” on the rise: Report

Monday, April 26, 2004, Burnside Industrial Park, Nova Scotia — Middle class Canadians and Nova Scotians may have more disposable income than they did 20 years ago. But they’re working longer hours to get it.

That’s just one finding of a new report on work by GPI Atlantic – the most detailed and comprehensive study of work conducted in Nova Scotia. The 500-page report, which took two full years of research and writing, outlines work trends in Nova Scotia and Canada over the past two decades, and estimates the economic costs of unemployment and underemployment. Some of the findings are surprising:

• Nearly two-thirds of Nova Scotians who work overtime do not get paid for it. In other words, in a typical week in 2001, roughly 373,000 overtime hours were worked free of charge in the province. Overtime altogether is on the rise in the province.
• In Nova Scotia, involuntary part-time employment has grown much faster than the voluntary types in the last 25 years, and is driving the overall upward trend in part-time work. Generally, Atlantic Canada has the highest rate of involuntary part-time work in the country. In addition, part-time workers are paid more poorly. For example, in Nova Scotia in 2001, full-time employees were paid on average nearly 50% more per hour than their part-time counterparts.
• A growing proportion of workers are working longer work hours, while on the opposite end of the scale, a growing number can’t find enough work hours.
• Couples with children are working longer hours for comparatively modest increases in pay. In 2000, Canadian parents together worked 206 more hours – equivalent to 26 more work-days – than they did in 1981. Nova Scotian couples with children worked an additional 141 hours combined – or 18 more eight-hour days – than they did in 1981. Despite the extra work, the disposable income of these families only rose by about eight per cent during the same time period. That means 40 per cent of the increase in disposable income was “bought” with extra work hours.

“We’re locked into a ‘work-and-spend’ cycle,” says the study’s lead author, Linda Pannozzo. “A segment of society has a reasonably high standard of living. But people are having to work increasingly long hours just to maintain the living standards they’ve become used to.”

No progress in work hours, quality of jobs, job security; leisure declining GPI Atlantic is a non-profit research institute based in Nova Scotia that is developing new measures of wellbeing – the Genuine Progress Index (GPI). The key indicators of genuine progress for this component of the Nova Scotia GPI show an overall decline in the last 25 years: Unemployment is higher, underemployment – as signified by the rate of involuntary part-time work – has increased; rates of overwork, including overtime, have increased; work stress is up; and there has been an overall decline in job security as signified by a massive increase in temporary, contingent work and a decline in permanent jobs with fringe benefits. As well, the growing polarization of hours has contributed to a widening income gap between rich and poor.

“The report clearly points to some troubling work and income trends in Canada and Nova Scotia,” says Pannozzo. “We’ve got people who are over-worked from all walks of life – rich, poor, and the struggling middle class. And at the same time we have a huge gap between rich and poor, and a growing class of underemployed.”

A large segment of working men and women – especially couples who work full time and have children – have less free time today than they did in the 1960s. Comparative time-use studies cited in the report also show that Canadians generally have less free time than most western Europeans. The average Danish citizen, for example, has 11 more hours of free time each week than the average Canadian.

Create jobs, improve quality-of-life by cutting overwork

The study also details the costs to society of both long work hours and lack of work. It points to solutions such as voluntary work-time reductions (with a proportionate reduction in pay without imperilling career advancement opportunities) and the right to refuse overtime work, both of which can redistribute work hours and create new jobs.

Unemployment in Nova Scotia cost the provincial and national economies at least $4 billion in 2001 in lost output and taxes, and in direct payments to the unemployed. In addition, unemployment may cost the province between $250 million and $400 million yearly in illness, divorce, and crime costs associated with joblessness.

Long work hours are similarly costly. In 2001, absenteeism costs alone specifically attributable to stress from long work hours were nearly $70 million in Nova Scotia.

In just one week in 2001, the amount of paid overtime clocked in Nova Scotia was equal to more than 6,000 full-time jobs. If all paid and unpaid overtime were eliminated Nova Scotia would have been 17,573 jobs richer. If even half these overtime hours were converted to new jobs – a more realistic scenario – there would be 8,787 new jobs. Similarly, a 10 per cent reduction in working time for those who are currently employed would free up nearly 1.6 million hours of work for redistribution among the unemployed or underemployed. Turning just half those hours into new jobs would create 19,370 new jobs and drop the unemployment rate to 5.6%. The report notes that the Netherlands dropped its unemployment rate from 12.2% to 2.9% partly by redistributing work hours.

Full report available at www.gpiatlantic.org/pdf/workhours (4MB PDF)

Contact:
Linda Pannozzo: 902-857-2058; or
Ronald Colman: 902-823-1944 or 221-2318

This report was reviewed in whole or in part by Arthur Donner, Andrew Harvey, Anders Hayden, Andrew Heisz, Mike McCracken, and Juliet Schor.

About the primary author: GPI Atlantic researcher, Linda Pannozzo, has degrees in environmental science, education, and journalism. She has written for This Magazine, The Ottawa Citizen, High Grader Magazine, and The Coast, among others. She is currently writing a book on proportional representation in the Canadian electoral system.