week in 1950 (Leontif, 1982). The trend since 1950 is far less certain for several reasons. First, the industrial goods-producing sector, for which the best comparative data exist over the long term, no longer dominates the economy, compared with the rise of service-producing industries in the post-World War II era. Second, some would argue that the changing contexts of work, for example telecommuting, multiple job holding, and work at home, have increased the intensity and duration of work in people's lives, an argument that is considered further in Chapters 3 and 4 (Hochschild, 1997). Hence, the typical length of work week estimates may no longer accurately capture the time that work takes in our lives.

Third, and related to the above point, major debate exists on methodological issues surrounding measurement of trends in hours of work. Conventional survey methodology, as used in the Current Population Survey, shows considerable stability in the average hours worked per week over the past 20 years, with men averaging about 41 hours and women about 35 hours per week in the mid-1990s (Rones et al., 1997). In contrast, some ethnographic studies (Hochschild, 1997) and much of conventional wisdom suggest that people are working longer hours in more places, have less free time, and feel more pressed for time now compared with the past. More comprehensive methodology and data, that is, national time diary studies, show a fair amount of stability in the estimated length of the work week between 1965 and 1985, and perhaps even a slight decline in the length of the work week of men but not of women (Robinson and Bostrom, 1994). The estimates by Robinson and Bostrom (1994) showed a sample of U.S. men in 1985 working an average of 46.4 hours per week, and women working an average of 40.6 hours per week. Schor (1992) criticizes these estimates, suggesting they overestimate women's labor force participation at the start of the period and ignore possible changes in weeks worked per year. Her national data and comparisons show a 9 percent increase in hours worked per year (from 1,786 to 1,949) between 1969 and 1987, for fully employed U.S. workers. In a recent study, Jacobs and Gerson (1998) found that men in professional and managerial careers were more likely to work 50 hours or more per week (34.5 percent) than men in other occupations or women in any occupation. Of women work-