Question of the Day — How many hours do you work per week? I consider childcare to be work, but let's just leave that out today. Include work that is not paid, but can be categorized as professional development. Blogging counts if it is related to your research or used to publicize your work. If you don't work over the summer and over breaks, then reduce your number by 1/4. If you work, but not all that much, during those months, then reduce it accordingly. Don't include commute time.
19 thoughts on “Question of the Day – Working Hours”
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Apt. 11d 
Are we counting weekends? If no, then 67.5.
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Count weekends.
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30-ish (plus the unpaid, obviously: a 4-year-old, plus 6-month twins.) Pre-kids was more like 60-70. Once the twins are in school, I suspect I’ll drift back up to 45-50.
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I’m a major multitasker, so this is hard.
27 hours a week at the office at least, not including weeks I have meetings and such, plus I often go in Fridays to work (not today), which makes the usual work week in the office about 33 hours.
My daily routine looks like this:
7 to 8 am roll out of bed. Husband leaves at 8. Shower, eat, badger son into dressing.
8:45 get kids to school
9:15 show up at office.
2:30 head home (except Tuesdays, when I teach till 3:30 and stay in the office till 4:30/5)
3 to 6 Home with kids. Supervise homework. Work may happen, like e-mail and reading.
6 to 9 Cook dinner, take care of household stuff, read e-mail and such. I will do errands or make family phone calls between 7 and 8, usually. My daughter and I have bedtime routine between 8 and 9.
9 to 11/12 My time! I will sometimes grade, sometimes watch tv, sometimes have “husband time.” If I’m trying to work out an assignment, I will often do a lot of reading/research online.
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As a union-represented employee I work 40 hours a week, with very rare overtime (which is paid at time and a half if at the end of a shift–plus they have to give me dinner and a cab ride home, double time and a minimum of 3 hours work if I am called in outside my regular shift). I’m a legal secretary.
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Technically, my work week is 37.5 hours. Effectively, it is a bit higher, but not by much.
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Leave house around 7:45-8:30am, depending on the day. Stay at the office teaching, meeting students, grading papers, attending meetings, etc., until 5:30pm. Get some work done in the evenings, but usually not very much; perhaps it averages out to maybe an half-hour per day, Monday-Thursday. Subtract about 1 1/2 hours per day for blogging/mess-around-on-the-internet time. Never work on Friday evenings or weekends–that is, professionally related work–unless it’s an emergency (midterm grades are due on Monday!!) or I’m at a conference. So…what does that all come to? Maybe a little over 40 hours a week. If we wanted to include my blogging as “work,” then perhaps up to 45 hours. That’s for typical weeks–it definitely won’t be the case for next week, our spring break!
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What about non-paid work that is not prof dev, such as doing the family grocery shopping and cooking, or identifying long-term care for elderly parents? I’d be doing OK if it weren’t for my load at home. And I have specifically opted to limit my career choices as it allows me to keep my paid work hours reasonable.
Paid work for my office: ~55/week
Unpaid personal work, excluding child care: ~15-20/week
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Professional (paid) work and related professional development: about 62 hours. This includes a nominal-40-hours-per-week job (usually 45-50) and a class I’m teaching as an adjuct right now. Once the class ends, this will go back down to about 50 hours (it’s a small seminar class – not too much prep work needed, thank heavens).
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Several years ago I kept track of my academic work and that hit 60 hours in a week fairly regularly. I may be a bit more efficient in my work habits these days.
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Very much depends. I have a part-time teaching gig (only 1 class!) that theoretically only takes 10-15 hrs./week. But I’d say it’s at 20 most weeks. My weeks vary, but I’m working as a consultant, currently with no projects, so just trying to build business. I’d say I put in 4-5 hours on my non-teaching days, so 12-15 in all.
So, at the low end, I work 22 hrs. per week. Half of that is for no pay at the moment. On the high end, which I think I approach most weeks, it’s 35. And I’m not counting housework, etc., which easily runs to 10-20 hours/week.
Earlier this year, I had a couple of projects that I was working on and my workload for that time was much greater and I expect the same to be true starting next month as I prepare for two plenary talks and a couple of articles.
Summer will be slower I think, but I will still be putting in probably 20 hours/week to continue building business. Of course, if I get hired for something, that could change.
I should also say that this is a huge change from my previous life, when I put in 35/week at a regular job and then spent 10-20 hours on housework and 10 or so on professional development.
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I have two part-time teaching jobs, one that’s theoretically 40% of full-time, and then one class as an adjunct. I’d say I spend 10 hours a week on the adjunct gig, and easily 25 hours a week actually on campus for my %40 percent job including meetings, student interaction, club sponsoring, teaching and covering classes for fellow teachers.
Add in prof development, including class prep and grading, plus blogging and the freelancing I do? That’s easily another 15-20 hours a week. I’m a big multitasker, like Wendy, so a lot of my “work hours” are accomplished side-by-side unpaid work like cooking, cleaning, childcare, family obligations, etc.
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I’d say between 49 and 51
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Does homeschooling and homeschooling prep count, or is that childcare? And housecare? What if I’m doing way more than 50% of what a working couple might/should share equally, can I count that? What are you looking for here?
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A while ago, I was teaching two courses a semester, a 100 student intro course and a 30 student “required for the major”, and worked out that over the year I spent about 800 hours prepping, grading, teaching, holding office hours and checking up on TAs, which averages out to just over 15 hours a week — about what Keynes said one needed to work to satisfy the old Adam.
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As a married person, with no children, the paying job would be the only work that would count for this exercise. I average between 50-55 hours a week, more if I have to travel.
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Allison, I was surprise by the findings in this study that faculty and grad students worked 50+ hours. I’m not sure why it surprised me, because I work that much. I just figured that I was insane. My neighbors don’t work that much. I have seen other studies that the average person works 40 hours a week. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I was just curious.
I multi-task a lot and my work overlaps into my personal life, so it’s really hard to put hard numbers on it. Even when I’m reading the paper, I’m finding stuff to use for class or for the blog or my research. I think I work 40-50 hours a week. Since I don’t have childcare, some of those hours happen at 11PM and later.
I am only paid for 20 hours of work.
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The limitation of 168 hours per week makes this a scary question.
If I’m not travelling to research sites or conferences, I’m in the office 8-6 M-F, often eating at my desk or with students or colleagues. I figure a base of 50 hours. A lack of perfect efficiency means adding time at home for refereeing manuscripts, reviewing material for search or other committees, grading, work-related dinners or other evening events, and extra class prep time. Say 5 more hours.
I spend at least 10 per week on home-related work (laundry, errands, paying bills, and tidying or cleaning the filth) and then if you want to add it ~10 on food (buy, prepare).
Adding parenting is tricky. What do you count? Homework help? Playing board games or cards? Sitting with them while they watch a DVD? Let’s be conservative and add just ~10 that is truly work.
So 55 hours on job/career, 30 on home/family, 50 on sleep.
Leaving more than 4 hours per day for everything else: commute, bathing and grooming, exercise (ha!), and leisure.
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so ive just come out of college and ive got stright into a job which is monday,tuesday,friday,saturday
and its 12-5 mon to fri and 7.30-3 on saturday
its 22 hours a week i was just wondering if i was entitled to any benifits or anything. i live at home with my mum who is a single parent so i know i have poll tax to pay.was just wondering if i could get anything back?
thanks
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