Report Finds Married Parents' Combined Work Hours on the Rise

On Labor Day 2006, the Economic Policy Institute releases its advance edition of The State of Working America 2006/2007. Prepared biennially since 1988, this publication sums up the problems and challenges facing American working families, presenting a wide variety of data on family incomes, hours worked, taxes, wages, unemployment, wealth, and poverty that enables the book's authors to closely examine the impact of the economy on the living standards of Americans.

One troubling statistic in the report: married parents' combined work hours are up 18 percent, with married, middle-income moms adding the equivalent of three months of full-time work to their annual schedules in the past 25 years. Unfortunately, the extra work is not necessarily generating extra income - according to the report, while productivity grew 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, median family income turned down 2.9 percent. Which means people are working more for less.

No wonder work life balance is such a hot topic these days.

Visit the State of Working America website here.