Opinion: Did you work this weekend? Probably, because that’s how Americans roll

It’s fitting that I first read this article on Americans working nights and weekends at 4:30 in the morning, as I checked work email before getting ready to head into the office. And that was after a series of emails Saturday and Sunday with sources for a project, and sending myself a couple of email reminders for topics to explore this week.

We Americans tend to overwork, according to a new study (fee access). No surprise there. Americans have long worked more hours than our counterparts in other industrialized nations. But it turns out we work more nights and weekends than our European peers. Part of that is the nature of the work itself — more night shifts, for example.

But a big part of it is the way many of us do our jobs. Two colleagues emailed me this morning — before 7 a.m. — and one said that she had written an editorial over the weekend. Another colleague sent out an email on Saturday on a topic of interest.

According to a working paper published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, that is not unusual work behavior. In fact, 29.2% of Americans work on weekends, compared with 25.5% of Britons, followed by Germany at 22.4%, France at 21.8%, the Netherlands at 18.7% and Spain at 9.6%.

Interestingly, immigrants were more likely to work on weekends, “while those who are better educated or older are less likely to work then,” write the report’s authors, economists Daniel S. Hamermesh and Elena Stancanelli.

The authors didn’t explore the cause of that difference, but note that it fits with other reports that show Americans work more hours than their counterparts elsewhere. And it raises a policy question: “How much work would be performed at night or on weekends in the United States if the country enacted policies that reduced weekly and annual hours of work, such as laws limiting overtime and mandating vacations that exist in many continental European countries?”

Hard to say, but I suspect I would still be awake at 4:30 a.m. to get a jump on the workday. Old habits die hard.

Follow Scott Martelle on Twitter @smartelle.