Incorrect. If anything, the period during and immediately preceding the Industrial Revolution (before those hard-won labor victories) is the outlier. The common thread in the traditional societies that still exist is a great deal of leisure time or light physical labor, even for farmers. Through the Middle Ages and up to the the advent of chattel slavery and industrialization in the Americas and Europe, labor schedules were quite mild and left plenty of time for leisure, socializing, labor outside of primary production duties (chores, cooking, etc., through which creative faculties could be exercises); much of the literature describing back-breaking labor, written by the privileged classes, was actually a form of propaganda or wish-fulfillment fiction.

I'd suggest reading The Overworked American by Juliet Schor. It provides an overview of historical modes of labor in the West.