Men are spending less time working thanks to gaming.

If innovations in housework helped free women to enter the labor force in the 1960s and 1970s, could innovations in leisure — like League of Legends — be taking men out of the labor force today?

That’s the logic behind a new working paper released on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper — by the economists Erik Hurst, Mark Aguiar, Mark Bils and Kerwin Charles — argues that video games help explain why younger men are working fewer hours.

That claim got a lot of attention last year when the University of Chicago published a graduation speech given by Mr. Hurst at its business school, where he discussed some of his preliminary findings. He says the paper is now ready to be read by the public.

By 2015, American men 31 to 55 were working about 163 fewer hours a year than that same age group did in 2000. Men 21 to 30 were working 203 fewer hours a year. One puzzle is why the working hours for young men fell so much more than those of their older counterparts. The gap between the two groups grew by about 40 hours a year, or a full workweek on average.

Instead of looking at why employers don’t want young men, this group of economists considered a different question: Why don’t young men want to work?

Mr. Hurst and his colleagues estimate that, since 2004, video games have been responsible for reducing the amount of work that young men do by 15 to 30 hours over the course of a year. Using the recession as a natural experiment, the authors studied how people who suddenly found themselves with extra time spent their leisure hours, then estimated how increases in video game time affected work.

Source.

Should Trump ban gaming to MAGA?

That reminds me - I need to get a job.

I think people are now just realizing that you work to live, not live to work. Gone are the days of putting in 60 hours a week for a measly salary.

No one has ever been on their death bed being quoted as, "I wish I had worked more in life."

Correlation =/= causation.

yeah maybe the cause is something deeper than just 'video games exist'

Indeed.

Good.

Hopefully that shuts up pseudo-feminists.

But yeah, this study seems fishy af.

A gold star comment sir.

Thread answered in the second reply, that was really efficient.

Nah the headline should read "Men are gaming thanks to spending less time working."

So there is no research done, at all, to the cause of young men working less hours, and therefore the conclusion of having done no research is that gaming is making young men work less hours. Great.

"We estimate that gaming/recreational computer use is distinctly a leisure luxury for younger men." I wonder how distinct they assumed it to be. Average age of 30? Around half the gamers are female? Women probably play less than men on average but... that's quite an estimate to throw out there.

I am confused by the summary. Maybe the full paper explains it all. I'm not going to pay money to read it.

Would expect some deeper research from the "National Bureau of Economic Research"

My findings tell me the author of this study spends less that 300 hours a year sitting on a toilet.

And either way, it could be any number of things in which people spend their free time, how ever much that is. If not gaming, it might be watching sports, playing sports, reading, artistic pursuits (painting, writing, music, dancing...) hiking or cycling, crafting replicas, stamp collecting, museums, pool, bar hopping or nightclubs... I could go on.

Video games isn't the cause of working less, because if the hours taken isn't enough to take care of rent and other living needs, whether we're talking part time or minimum wage that even on 40 hrs full time often isn't enough for basic living, they'll look for additional work to not end up homeless. Of course I'm aware there are irresponsible people out there, who poorly manage their time and finances, spending without thinking, that lose their services and utilities or receive eviction warnings. These are the people who don't learn from harsh experience or lean on generous family and friends, thus don't become self sufficient. But on the greater whole, most people won't put leisure at the top of their priorities when they know their income isn't meeting their basic needs first.

Video games isn't SO influential that it compels people to find more time in at the cost of work hours needed to sustain themselves. This coming from someone who enjoys the immersive experience that gaming offers. The free time is simply what ever any one has based on their work to revenue ratio.

So what it comes down to is; it's not the activity that makes anyone choose their distribution of time between work and leisure, it's simply how they choose to use the leisure time they have.

btw @DragonfireXZ95 do you have any stat info on employees no longer working 60 hr weeks? It's not like that's common in a single job I'm sure, but as so many places have cutbacks on hours distributed between employees, a lot of people have to work 2 or even 3 jobs to make ends meet. Which does amount to 60 hour work weeks (if not more) and that's not working extra time for extra profit, again this is just to make it to the end of the month.

It's possible the two are related, but a cursory glance over the findings leads me to believe there is a lot of hand-waving and false causation in the results. I find it more likely that other recent studies on the labor market are correct in their conclusion that people in general just don't give a shit about company loyalty anymore. And for good reason, over the last 30 years businesses have been treating their employees like farm animals in that they can easily be replaced by mechanization or cheaper labor elsewhere. In private industry the vast majority of employees have little to no job security, which has completely destroyed the idea of company loyalty.

Who is going to be willing to work extra hours for little to no gain at a company who views them as easily replaced commodities? Why would they give a shit if the company turns a profit when the extra money is only going to go to the owner and upper management? Why would they waste their finite time helping someone in middle management meet their quota when they treat them like shit anyway?

An abundance of leisure activities certainly contributes to what the author is seeing, but it is far more likely that it stems from lack of any company loyalty due to the shitty hiring/firing practices and turnover in the job market we have seen in the last 30 years. Further, I would argue that it isn't even a problem to begin with. Just look at other industrialized countries, they work far fewer hours and have far more vacation time (that they actually use) and the measure of overall happiness in these countries tend to be FAR higher than they are in the US.

@DragonfireXZ95: Wow, get out of my head!

And yeah, that "paper" seems to forget that correlation != causality.

All we know is men work less, play more. Doesn't mean that video games are the reason men decide to put in less hours.

I think as others have already said, we're finally wising up to the fact that your job, while important, should never take priority over your own physical/mental health, or your family.

Whenever I run into a "company man" who doesn't understand how I can put my career so low on the priority list, I always ask him the following question:

"When I'm on my deathbed, will you be by my side?"

I thought not.

I think OP should switch "working" and "gaming" and then well have the real issue.

I fucking wish, I regularly work 50+ hours a week and have done so for my entire working life.

Well I'm one of those men.

I game around 6 to 8 hours a day and work 4 hours a day.

I speak mostly of salaried employees that don't get any extra money working over 40 hours a week. Hourly employees could be different in that regard.

The report made no mention of any specific subgroup, so I just assumed that it may be talking of many salaried employees.

Yep. When you're living with your parents you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with. It's when you're living on your own which incurs taking on more responsibilities, that you realize how limited your time is, that you can't have as much of it for gaming as you used to.

Which is also the paradox most of us have had to deal with; before moving out we have all that time but hardly the money we need to invest in the hobby, both for hardware and software. Then when we are fully earning we have more money but less time to keep up with all the games coming out. And that's not even factoring in how those responsibilities of living on your own demands more of our money, to be taken away from our game funding.

Can't say the same for me. Between my different jobs and rehearsing I typically work around 12 hours a day. Those days I get in an hour or two before I go to bed (if I can stay awake which is most nights). Some weekend days or days off like yesterday the 4th though I can get a lot more in if the wife and I don't have big plans. I got around 6 hours of Demon's Souls in yesterday.

I hate working.

Well, I don't hate it. Just wish I had more time off.

Can't really blame gaming 100%, young people these days just don't have the same skill set as generations past. Easiest way to get ahead nowadays is to get a degree, if you try to get a skilled job such as carpentry or troweling most places won't hire unless you have experience. That's why I think Trump's apprentice plan is a good idea, maybe if companies have an incentive to hire greenhorns we can get more people in to those types of jobs. College isn't for everybody you know.

Another thing to think about to is also the fact that people who have a degree in a given field won't have to work as hard to make more money, think about when you were growing up and your parents would always say, "Do good in school so you can go to college and get a good job." This is how things are now people are trying to work less and get more and I can't say it's the wrong thing to do, it's just that some people take that mentality to far.

I work a lot. I also game a lot because I play on portable. I definitely work more than I game, though, and those two things have nothing to do with each other since being at work everyday takes precedence. I believe this article lacks sufficient proof of it's findings, though. In the end it all comes down to the individual.

Playing video games when you're not working, does not equal not working in order to play video games.

I actually work more so that I can have enough money to play more games.

Also assuming this is true for a lot of other people.

This is not a good thing any way you put it and people who defend this don't know better.

Who do you see "defending" this? Most of us are refuting it for the fallacious propaganda it is, under the pretense of disingenuous "research".

@AdobeArtist: You damn defender of lazy non working men!!!

Not me. I spend less time sleeping because of gaming.

Most times I'm so tired after work that I just surf the web and watch crap from Netflix/Viaplay/Youtube.

I wish lol.

When we lose the right to stay in bed til noon while also bitching about how expensive everything is, the terrorists have won!! ?

its funny you posted this article TC because a co-worker of mine (who's working part-time atm) just the other day refused to work more hours because he said "it will intervene with his gaming time."

lol

This is the truth. I really need to get more sleep. I wish I could cut back on work, play more, and get paid the same though. hehe :)

I'd write a more in depth post about this article, but I have video games to play.

This.

People nowadays want a more balanced approach to life. Work hard, Party Game hard. But I dunno about working less, I work for 10-15 hours a day. I game hard but its more of i sleep less than i work less.

Maybe its more of a people don't do overtime as much as they used to. I know once i'm done for the day, i'm done. Weekend overtime? No thanks. Its family and my gaming happy hours. People also don't get married young anyways, so no need for that extra income.

Haha.. So true. Me too! Still putting in 10 hour work days though, plus weekly ot.

You need a healthy balance between work and play. I work to live, not live to work.

If there is anything reducing work time, it is automation.

A few years ago in my nearby large store, they used to have 6 cashiers, now they have 2. And the reason for that reduction has to do with what they replaced those cashiers with, automated cashiers, where customers themselves would scan their own products.

Hell, even if work hours are fewer, you will notice that productivity has gone up.

All in all, I question that research, since it seems to be ignoring the more possible causes. And that is the fact that machinery is making humans obsolete at an alarming rate.

If this guy really has the luxury of living on part time income, I'd have to assume he's either living with his parents or receives some form of family support to supplement his expenses.

As someone who use to do 80 hours weeks, **** that shit I'll stick to my 40 hour weeks.

Blah my work hours have gone up.

Or, you know, doing other things like watching Castlevania on Netflix!

Not exactly a great study. Correlation =/= causation and all that.

I do think that is a great thing that work has become much less pronounced compared to before though as evidenced in some countries that have less work hours per week. For the most part their are plenty of jobs where the work done is actually somewhat minor compared to the downtime. This is normally due to automation, testing, and having lower lead times being a major factor in lessening workload and time to do manual tasks.

In other words.... even if we don't like to admit it, an efficient solution especially in a slower environment normally means that workers don't need to do nearly as much stuff as they say they do. Psychology and all that when people say otherwise.

Of course their are environments where these kinds of DevOps/Lean practices are not being used as much, but its becoming less and less of overall.