Numbers reveal burn out of U.S. workers
By Matt Saccaro, Salon
The American worker is overworked, underpaid, and suffering from severe burnout.
This sentiment isn’t populist rhetoric, there are numbers to back it up. A study from WorkPlaceTrends — an HR-focused research firm — and Staples Advantage polled over 2,500 workers and reached troubling results. According to the data, 53 percent of American workers report feeling burned out at work.
With current working conditions, it’s easy to see why. A 2012 study concluded smartphones and tablets enable employers to further colonize a worker’s time to the tune of two extra hours a day since they can be reached at all hours. In 2014, Gallupestimated the typical American workweek was 47 hours, not 40; the American worker was toiling for almost a full extra day. Of the workers this recent study polled, more than half worked a day longer than eight hours.
“This isn’t the workplace of 10 years ago,” Dan Schawbel, founder of WorkPlaceTrends, co-author of the study, and author of the New York Times bestselling book “Promote Yourself”, told Salon. “There’s a lot of pressure. And it’s competitive in the sense that anyone in the world could take your job for less money, so you have to work harder.”