High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

Can you expand on this, references etc? Up until now, I've only heard about the (substantial) harm caused by fatherless homes / single mothers (maybe single parents? not sure, it might be too small sample for single fathers).

>But as staff cut back their hours, it costs medical organizations money

it's just companies screeching that they are making less money because salaried employees are doing less unpaid work. I think the pandemic had a large effect on people in terms of

1. Having to face potential mortality much earlier than expected and thus putting lower priority on long term career stuff

2. Gave lots of people a glimpse of how much they miss out on due to commuting and being in office when in reality they can do most of their work from home and get benefits like more time with family, more time for hobbies, etc.

edit: Oops, that 5 hour decline is for the highest 10% of workers, not the highest 10% of earners.

Given that they are discussing the hours worked by people making 90th percentile income, I wonder how much of the shift is due to changes in the population that ends up being in the top 10% (there's similar declines in the 80th and 70th deciles, which sort of points away from that concern).

The guy in the article cutting back to 60-70 was and still is an outlier (during short weeks, still a long workday a week more than the mean).

One reason for the decision was I figured in 20 years looking back, I doubt I'll regret sacrificing my career (to some degree), but I can imagine I'd seriously regret missing out on the time with my kids, which you can never get back.

Before I had kids, I remember someone on a podcast saying some thing like 'I'd give anything to go back and have another day with my kids when they were young'. It had quite a big impact on me, and I still think about it often (especially when we're having a hard day!)

The top-earning 10% of men in the U.S. labor market logged 77 fewer work hours in 2022, on average, than those in the same earnings group in 2019, according to a new study of federal data by the economics department at Washington University in St. Louis. That translates to 1.5 hours less time on the job each workweek, or a 3% reduction in hours.

The problem here is not journalism - it's people unable or unwilling to read correctly. The second sentence contains a link to the study [1] with all the information you need.

> Which is why almost no one reads that stuff

Yep, it is clear people don't read this stuff; many simply assume things instead.

When you fail to read an article then assume it's another example of your prior belief, especially if completely incorrect as in this case, you're simply creating a world view that is not the actual world.

[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w30833

next penny-less musicians doing well too??

Being a broke bartender is maybe cute in your 20s and maybe they are enjoying the "great women" they are dating.

The problem is - once you hit 30 and beyond, being a broke bartender ain't that cute, and the kind of women stuck dating them aren't that *great" either.

And there's no easy leap from a broke bartender in your 20s to someone who can buy a house and support a family in your 30s.

So what I hear in this story, is maybe someone who would otherwise do 130% to go from "director" to "senior director", doing 120% instead so they can play with their kid and extra few hours a week.

It's a very different choice than opting into broke loserdom.

I disagree. It’s not that women don’t care about money as much as they used to. They actually still care! It’s that other factors are more important now than they used to be. Your looks is very important because women aren’t gonna die without a man (social media and dating apps hasn’t helped men either here). In older times, you needed a man or to be married to make a lot of things happen. We’re in a place now where women don’t need a man for financial purposes. This is a good thing but it comes with the downsides that now women are much more concerned with looks than they were in the past because they can be.

You’re still not going to attract women when you make less money than them. It’s still as important as it was before. For high earning women, the bar is even higher. You can’t just be income match - you often need to make significantly more. If she’s making $300k, you better be making $500k. If you don’t believe me - try getting on some dating apps and getting into a LTR with a woman in nyc or sf. You’ll find out that they care about money as much as they ever did.

Also, dating doesn’t mean long term.

I don’t see how your statement becomes less true as income increases. More true if anything in my experience.

Is there evidence to suggest women lining up to date forklift drivers?

How are you considered successful? When you're winning at some kind of game. Let's just say a successful soccer player. Or an actor. Or a musician. Or you have success in business. With that comes money, I agree. But when you're domination some kind of game, the women will follow.

Blind is too full of sad and chronically single dudes for "beta bux" to be as successful as it's claimed to be.

For better or worse the passively rich now inhabit the 97th+ percentiles (probably worse if you look at the exponential increase in income above 90th)

Conferences are a bad sample because they really are vacations. But it's not representative of how a professional works. My buddy is a neurologist who works 70 hours a week at a hospital. 2 times a year he goes on one of those boondoggles, but the other 50 weeks a year he's spending a lot of time in the ICU.

It's hard to lump high earners into one bucket. There are salesmen and some executives who probably work 30 hours a week at worst. And there are lawyers and IBankers who work 60 on a good week.

I know it's easier said than done, but anyone who has the means to do it should try.

The commitment to work is still there, but now more and more have reasonable boundaries.

The work attire for technical professionals shifted from suits and ties to jeans and t-shirts because the power shifted from Wall Streeters to Silicon Valley hippies as the value added to the economy by computers grew.

This smells like another work-cultural element that could shift easily if several startup-types declare four-day work weeks and find themselves enough runway money to get to revenue-positive.

Maybe it's impossible. But if the folks who champion productivity-through-focus are to be believed, those firms should be X times more productive than five-day firms or crunching firms, the numbers will show it, and the industry will follow.

I think there's a lot of value in face to face interaction with coworkers, but it's hard to want to go into a office when the trade off is less time spend with my family.

I hope this becomes widespread just so I can point and laugh at those thrust into poverty because their pensions required that young men hoodwink themselves into overwork to be solvent.

I switched to a 32 hour week and I don't feel like my productivity is impacted beyond not being able to attend some meetings, most of which were superfluous anyway. If it's really important I will make the time elsewhere, but that has happened once or twice in ~8 months.

It’s definitely a trade off—work more hours to advance more quickly and make more money—but working 60 to 80 hours per week is cutting your effective hourly wage by 25 to 50 percent.

Many people also over-estimate their own work hours. I had an employer who measured and also surveyed employees and compared the two results, and found most people claiming 75 hours/week were actually pulling more like 55-65. Some people who thought they were doing over 50 were actually under 40. A lot of people in the company I was in were (perhaps subconsciously) factoring in their commutes as work time, and a lot of people come in a bit late during crunch time but mentally feel like they’re starting work at 9am on the dot, and estimate work hours that way.

The future where people can work very little to survive is already here, but it's only for those who can produce great value with very little effort.

I think 4 weeks including company holidays is doable.

When I was 27 my I had 5 weeks PTO and I have never had that much since. All these unlimited PTO places barely get you 3 in most cases. And unlimited is just a scam to not have to pay out when you leave.

First off, the 32% bracket kicks in at 170k of taxable income, which is going to be at least 183k of actual income because of the standard deduction (probably higher because of itemized deductions).

Second, the 6.2% social security tax stops at 160k of income, so your income in the 32% bracket is really only taxed at 1.8% more than most of your income in the 24% bracket.

And if you are grinding away then you might not have the energy and time to create the real opportunity to help yourself.

Is that an euphemism for money laundering (Breaking Bad) or make car wash owners really that much money?

According to [2] a household needs to earn 570k. This is in line with [3] which claims a household needs to earn 590k. It's definitely feasible for a couple to earn that on salary alone.

[1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ [2] https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/ [3] https://smartasset.com/data-studies/what-it-takes-to-be-in-t...