Working The (Early) Graveyard Shift

This set of statistics about the American worker is staggering.  We work longer, harder, more productively, and for fewer benefits and wages than any other Western country.   Here's a couple truly shocking facts:

• According to the Center for American Progress on the topic of work and family life balance, “in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.” I don’t care who stays home and who works in terms of gender (work opportunity equality for all – it’s a family choice). Either way, when all adults are working (single or with a partner), that’s a huge hit to the American family and free-time in the American household.
• The U.S. is the ONLY country in the Americas without a national paid parental leave benefit. The average is over 12 weeks of paid leave anywhere other than Europe and over 20 weeks in Europe.
• Zero industrialized nations are without a mandatory option for new parents to take parental leave. That is, except for the United States.

Ahh, but it gets worse.

• Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.

Meanwhle, CEO salaries continue to skyrocket.  And there's this:

Even in Japan, you get two weeks of paid vacation no matter what you do for a living.  And yet here, some 40% of American workers aren't even offered vacation or holidays off.  We put in three weeks more work than even Japan does every year on average.

And yet many of us feel lucky just to have a job at all, and that if we say anything, we'll lose it.

How's that working out for you, America?