By Paul J. Rosch, M.D.
President, The American Institute of Stress
Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry
New York Medical College

Originally published in the Health and Stress, the newsletter (June 2005) of The American Institute of Stress

Several surveys have shown that work pressures are the major source of stress for U.S. adults and that stress levels have progressively increased over the past few decades. Some of the reasons for this include job insecurity and studies showing that Americans are working longer hours, taking fewer vacations and have less leisure time to unwind.

The International Labor Office reported in 2003 that working hours in the United States exceeded those in most other developed countries, including Japan. In addition, over 15 million Americans were working an evening shift, night shift, rotating shift or other irregular schedule that was dictated by their employer.

A 2001 survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute had previously revealed that one-third of U.S. employees reported that they routinely felt overworked. Major contributors to this were the lack of, or inability to take advantage of, a vacation and that leisure time had to be spent on chores that could not be done during the work week. The report generated so much media interest that it was decided to repeat the study in greater depth every four years.

The second study, released in March by the Institute, was titled "Overwork in America: When the Way We Work Becomes Too Much." It found that 44 percent of U.S. employees were overworked "often" or "very often." Respondents indicated that in the past month they were either frequently or very frequently:

a) Overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to do (27 percent).

b) Didn't have the time to step back and process or reflect on the work that they had been doing (29 percent).

c) Had to work a lot of overtime (26 percent).

Being overworked was defined as a value of over 2.7 after averaging the answers to these three questions on a scale of 1 = never to 5 = very often. Only 29 percent of all respondents replied that they had "rarely" or "never" experienced any of these three problems.

When employees were separated into high, mid and low levels of being overworked, there were clear differences between work-related as well as personal problems. The high overworked level group were more likely to make mistakes at work, feel angry at their employers for expecting them to do so much, resent coworkers who didn't work as hard as they did, have higher stress levels, be depressed or have health problems, or be neglectful with respect to caring for themselves. The breakdown on this was as follows:

• 20 percent of those reporting being highly overworked say they make a lot of mistakes as opposed to none (0 percent) in those who experienced low levels of overwork.

• 39 percent of those experiencing a high degree of overwork say they felt very angry toward their employer in contrast to only 1 percent in the low overwork group.

• 34 percent in the highly overworked group versus 12 percent in the low overwork group say they often or very often resent their coworkers.

• Half the high overwork employees report their health as good compared to two-thirds of the low overwork group.

• Only 41 percent of those who experience high overwork say they are very successful in being able to take good care of themselves versus 68 percent of the low overwork group.

• Only 8 percent of the low overwork cohort had high levels of depressive symptoms compared to 21 percent of those who were highly overworked.

• 36 percent of the highly overworked group are highly stressed compared with only 6 percent who experience low levels of overwork.

These last two observations are of particular interest since the World Health Organization reported that by 2020, clinical depression will outrank cancer and follow only heart disease as the second leading cause of death and disability in the world. In addition, in Galinsky's 1999 "Ask The Children" report, which launched the Work and Families Institute, when asked their one wish to improve how their mother's and father's work affected their lives, most children wished their parents would be less stressed and less tired.

The Institute's latest study found that the feeling of being overworked often stemmed from an inability to complete an assignment because of having to work on too many tasks at the same time and/or frequent interruptions. These problems are increasing because "in many organizations there is simply more work to do with less time and fewer people to do it."

Almost nine out of 10 employees experienced one or both of the following pressures. "My job requires that I work very hard" and "I never seem to have enough time to get everything done on my job." When responses to these questions were averaged, 54 percent of employees who felt highly pressured on the job fell into the highly overworked category compared to only 4 percent of those who felt low levels and 18 percent who experienced moderate levels of being pressured.

Another contributor is having to do tasks that are perceived as having little value or a waste of time, like "having a meeting to plan a meeting to plan a meeting, etc." Overall, 29 percent of employees strongly or somewhat agreed that they spent a lot of time doing things that are unnecessary. Over half of those who said they had to perform a lot of such low-value duties considered themselves to be highly overworked in contrast to only 25 percent who didn't have this complaint.

Women were more likely to be overworked than men were. This might seem counterintuitive because men tend to work longer hours; they are more accessible to employers during non-working hours and work in areas that are more prone to being overly demanding. However, women reported that their jobs required multi-tasking much more often than men did, which may be a crucial factor.

When women and men with equal multi-tasking jobs were compared, gender differences disappeared, suggesting that more multi-tasking may explain the greater likelihood for women to be overworked.

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