Changing Work Life Patterns: A Twenty-five Year Review

Over the past 25 years there have been substantial changes in the proportion of population engaged in market work and in the age and sex composition of the work force. The nonworker-worker ratio has fluctuated widely, primarily as a reflection of the dramatic fluctuations in birth rates, while the long-term trends of increasing participation by women and declining years of work by men have accelerated. Recent developments indicate that this acceleration of long-term trends has taken on certain new characteristics: young women appear to be returning to the labor market much more quickly after the birth of children, with a consequent reduction of time out of the work force; and the customary retirement age of men is falling. As a result, work life patterns are becoming increasingly similar for men and women and much higher proportions of the population in the age range 20-54 are working than has been true in the past. In a broader context, it is suggested that the rapid decline in average annual worker hours characteristic of the first part of the twentieth century may be transformed into a decline in average worker years in the last part.