Writing in 1928, the economist John Maynard Keynes made the assertion that the progress of technology, and the automation of work, would lead to a point in time where workers would put in about fifteen hours per week, with three hour work days being a normal part of society. Keynes was hardly the only thinker to predict a future of leisure for humanity, where we were freed from the necessity of excessive toil by the machines we created. Yet this future failed to materialize, and it seems that we have even less leisure time than we used to. Why is this? Sociologist Craig Lambert asserts in his new book Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day , that part of the answer is the rise of "shadow work." The author chooses not to focus on the increasing amount of time Americans are putting in at work, nor an economic system that requires many poorer workers to spread their time across two or three different jobs, but instead on the hidden trends that erode wh...
Occasional author. Lover of coffee.