Topic

Jobs & labor

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Range chart of annual hours worked per worker from 1870 to 2023 across 14 rich countries. A shaded band runs from the lowest to the highest country each year, descending from 2,755–3,483 hours in 1870 to 1,335–1,789 in 2023, and narrowing as it falls. A gold median line runs through it from 3,138 to 1,561 hours, with rings marking the eight observations before 1950. A dashed reference line at 2,080 hours marks a 40-hour week all year; the entire band sits below it from the 1970s on. A dip at 2020 is labelled. The United States ends highest at 1,789 hours and Germany lowest at 1,335.

Economy

Your great-great-great-grandparents worked twice the hours you do

Across the 14 rich countries with records back to 1870, the median worker put in 3,138 hours a year. Today it is 1,561 — almost exactly half. Every one of them now works less than a 40-hour week all year would imply.

Chartive EditorialSep 6, 2026

Line chart of the U.S. union membership rate from 1983 to 2025 on a 0 to 40 percent scale. The private-sector line falls steadily from 16.8% to 5.9%. The public-sector line stays high, drifting only from 36.7% to 32.9%. The shaded gap between them widens from 20 percentage points in 1983 to 27 today. A dashed line for all workers falls from 20.1% to 10.0%.

Economy

One in six private-sector workers was in a union. Now it is one in seventeen.

In 1983, 16.8% of American private-sector workers belonged to a union. By 2025 that had fallen to 5.9% — the lowest on record — while the rate among government workers barely moved.

Chartive EditorialSep 3, 2026

Area chart of the realized CEO-to-worker pay ratio in the U.S. from 1965 to 2025, rising from 21-to-1 to about 325-to-1, with spikes to 380 in 2000 and an all-time 408 in 2021 and a dip to 166 in 2009.

Economy

CEOs out-earn workers 325 to 1

How many times more the average big-company CEO is paid than a typical U.S. worker — up from about 21-to-1 in 1965 to roughly 325-to-1 in 2025, after peaking at 408-to-1 in 2021.

Chartive EditorialAug 22, 2026

Diverging bar chart of the change in U.S. job postings by occupation since February 2020: physicians and surgeons up 83%, data and analytics down 40%.

Economy

The U.S. job market looks like it went back to normal. It didn’t.

Six years on, total online job postings sit just 2% above their February 2020 level — but the mix has been turned inside out. Demand for screen-based work has collapsed, while hands-on, care and infrastructure work has boomed.

Chartive EditorialAug 14, 2026