U.S. productivity: Putting in all those hours doesn’t matter

Americans work among the most hours of any advanced economy, save Korea, where stressed out workers have begun checking themselves into prison-like institutions to get away from it all, and Japan, where they’ve invented a word for death from overwork: karoshi.

Americans also work among the most “extreme” hours, which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development defines as 50-plus hours a week. It’s a trend that’s been accelerating among white-collar workers since the 1980s, especially once Silicon Valley programmers started pulling all-nighters and wearing T-shirts boasting “90 Hours a Week and Loving it.”