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98 Monthly Lab. Rev. 43 (1975)
Research Summaries

handle is hein.journals/month98 and id is 799 raw text is: WORK SCHEDULES AND THE RUSH HOUR JANICE NEIPERT HEDGES WORKERS IN MOST urban areas encounter heavy traffic congestion as they commute to and from work. Morning and evening, the rush hour phenomenon consumes time that could be spent in work or leisure, contributes to stress, wastes automobile fuels in start- stop driving, and pollutes the. air. It strains urba. transportation facilities for brief periods daily ano leaves excess capacity at others. Rush hour traffic is not confined to commuter trips. Shoppers, students, and tourists are among those who may be traveling at the same hours as workers. Nonetheless, journeys between home and work make up almost one-third of all vehicle miles of travel,, and a far larger proportion during the peak commuter hours. To gain insight into the prevailing patterns o beginning and ending hours of work, data were collected from the Current Population Survey (CPS) in May 1973 and May 1974.2 Two questions pro- vide data on the hours that nonfarm wage and salary workers usually start and stop work on their sole or principal job. The questions are: At what time of day did . . . begin work on this job most days last week? and At what time of day did ... end work on this job most days last week? Starting and stopping times were reported to the nearest hour. The responses to these questions reveal national patterns in starting and stopping hours. The situation in any given labor market may differ substantially and can only be identified through local surveys. Findings These data show a sharp peak in starting time around 8a.m. and an even sharper peak in stopping time, around 4 p.m. (See chart 1.) Twenty-six million wage and salary workers, almost two-fifths of the total, usually start work at or about 8 o'clock. Thirty-seven m.llion workers, more than half of the :')tal, usually stop work at or about 4 o'clock. These two daily peaks predominate in both goods- and service-producing industries and in government. (See table 1.) ioe principal deviations are in manu- facturing and in mining, in which both 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. are prime starting times and, in finance, in which about equal numbers begin at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. The prominence of the morning and afternoon peaks is attributable in part to the fact that far more full-time wag, and salary employees usually work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. (19 million) than any other schedule. (See table 2.) In addition, almost I million part-time workers work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I to 4 days a week.4 Full- and part-Eiri, employees on this daily schedule make up about three-fourths of all wage and salary workers who usually begin work at the morning peak. The 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule is a somewhat smaller component in 4 o'clock departures, account- ing for one-half of the-workers who stop at that hour. Four p.m. is quitting time as well for a majority of full-time employees who begin at 7 a.m, or 9 a.m., and for a substantial minority who begin as early as 6 a.m. or as late as 10-11 a.m.' It also is quitting time for over 2 million part-time workers in addition to those on 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedules. Traffic around 4 o'clock is further exacerbated by the 4 million full- and part-time employees, in roughly equal numbers, who start work at that hour. As chart 1 shows, part-time workers exhibit a more even distribution in beginning and ending hours than those on full-time schedules. About the same number start work at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. and almost as many start at 4 p.m. Although the largest number of part-time workers stop at 4 o'clock, the Janice Neipert Hedges is an economist in the Division of Labor Force Studies, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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