The imbalances between the hours that a person works and those that the same person would like to work have important consequences in the personal, family, and organisational sphere. On the one hand, people who work fewer hours than they desire tend towards suffering from depression and low self-esteem (Dooley et al., 2000). On the other, an overload of hours increases the risk of anger, resentment, and conflicts between work and family (Jacobs and Gerson, 2004). In addition, dissatisfaction with working hours also has consequences for organisations, as often it triggers the types of conduct that jeopardise productivity: absenteeism, improper use of sick leave, and other forms of evasion (Clark, 2001). 

Working fewer hours than desired is particularly problematic among young people, as imbalances can have negative consequences for their career and personal future by reducing the accumulation of human capital, providing insufficient wages, delaying the age at which they leave home and leading to the postponement or even renunciation of motherhood (Chinchilla et al., 2017). How has young people’s dissatisfaction with working hours evolved over time? What implications did the crisis of 2008 have? Who are the people most affected by these imbalances? Answering these questions is crucial for the development of policies that encourage equality of opportunities among young people, as well as organisational and social wellbeing.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of young people who wish to work more or fewer hours than those that they are working from the year 2000 to 2018. A quick glance serves to confirm that a deficit of working hours continues to be the main problem in Spain. Between 2000 and 2007, the percentage of young people who wanted to work more hours decreased to reach its minimum value of 10%. From then on, and coinciding with the outbreak of the global crisis, it started to increase once more and by the year 2018 it was affecting nearly 1 in every 4 young people (24%). In the same year, only 1 in every 10 workers aged over 32 years wanted to work more hours (9.8%). 

Moreover, an excess of working hours went from being a problem that was practically non-existent in the year 2000, to affecting 7% of the younger population by 2006. With the economic recession, the figure has stabilised at around 3%, but there are signs that the excess working hours culture is emerging in the first years of work experience. 

Working 2 hours per week more or less than desired does not have the same economic and personal conse-quences than working 10, or 20. Therefore, understanding the dimension of the problem requires knowledge not only of the number of young people affected, but of the size of the gap between hours worked and hours desired. As reflected in figure 2, the deficit of hours worked grew from 13.3 hours in the year 2000, to nearly 18 in the year 2018.

The gap has also varied among those who would like to reduce their working hours, although in a less linear way. There was a striking increase between 2004 and 2007, growing from 8.6 to 14.2 hours per week in just 3 years. Subsequently, during the years of the crisis, the gap fell slightly until it reached 12.2 hours in 2018.

Labour precarity is the main cause of the deficit of hours worked. This is shown by figure 3, which presents the percentage of people who wish to work more hours according to the type of employment: 57% of young people in part-time employment and 25% of those who have a temporary employment contract would prefer to work more hours, which makes it clear that part-time working is, in many cases, involuntary.

Furthermore, the probability of wanting an increase in hours is greater in predominantly female occupations (23.8%) than in predominantly male ones (12.6%), and in those of a lower status (services, administrative and manual occupations). For example, women sales assistants, cleaners (household, hotel, and office cleaners), carers and health-related professionals (dental assistants, receptionists at medical centres, etc.) are some of the most affected occupations. These data are the result of more sophisticated statistical analyses that also include variables related with an individual’s characteristics and which we show later on.

With regard to people’s characteristics, figure 4 shows that 24% of young people originating from countries outside of the EU want to work more hours, versus 18% of Spanish people and 7% of those who arrive from the EU-15. Also, women are more likely to suffer a deficit of hours than their male counterparts, whether or not they have children. Finally, the problem is more pronounced from the age of 27 years onwards, once young people have left the education system.

The number of people who wish to reduce their working hours is comparatively low, but there has been a no-ticeable increase since the year 2000. Young employees in management and professional occupations (doctors, developers, financial analysts and catering and commercial managers, among others), are the main people affected by the culture of long working days and they would like a reduction of 35% of their working hours, versus the reduction of 19% that administrative staff would like. 

In addition to the situation of young people in high-status occupations (professional and management), working too many hours is also a frequent problem among women with children, which reveals a lack of flexibility and a business culture that shows little sensitivity towards motherhood.

Working more or fewer hours than desired has important consequences for the working, personal and family life of young people. The outbreak of the 2008 economic crisis not only intensified the problem, but widened the gap between men and women, and between young people from different social strata and originating from other countries. Taking into account these characteristics is of crucial importance when designing policies to promote equal opportunities among young people, particularly on the threshold of the economic crisis that will ensue from the current public health emergency caused by covid-19.

CHINCHILLA, N., E. JIMÉNEZ and M. GRAU (2017): "Maternidad y trayectoria profesional en Es-paña: análisis de las barreras e impulsores para la maternidad de las mujeres españolas", IE-SE. 

CLARK, A.E. (2001): "What really matters in a job? Hedonic measurement using quit data", Labor Economics, 8. 

DOOLEY, D., J. PRAUSE and K.A. HAM-ROWBOTTOM (2000): "Underemployment and depres-sion: longitudinal relationships", Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 41.

JACOBS, J.A., and K. GERSON (2004): The time divide: work, family, and gender inequality, Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.