Average Weekly Hours

Average Weekly Hours (AWH), from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, measures mean hours paid per private payroll job. Its source is Current Employment Statistics, a monthly survey of employer payroll records, also called the establishment survey. It records hours paid for the pay period including the 12th, with overtime and paid leave included, for private jobs only. Each job counts separately, overtime is collected only in manufacturing, and unpaid absence or part-time work can lower the average below scheduled hours.

Responses cover the pay period including the 12th, collected by phone, web, and data files from about 121,000 businesses and government agencies covering 631,000 worksites. Web respondents get an advance reminder email near the 12th. It is published monthly in Employment Situation, the national jobs report, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, normally on the first Friday after the reference month.

Hours appear with unemployment, payrolls, and earnings tables, initially as preliminary estimates from incomplete reports, then revised over the next two months. Each year the annual benchmark re-anchors March employment to tax records, shifting higher-level hours through new weights, with hours to one decimal.

Paid hours move with industry mix, paid leave, and unpaid absence, not with individual choices alone.

• Total private, all employees: the headline mean of all private industries, weighted by jobs.

• Goods-producing: mining and logging near 45 hours, construction near 39, and manufacturing near 40, the only source of overtime data.

• Private service-providing: trade, transport, information, finance, business, health, leisure, and other services, near 33.3 hours.

• Production and nonsupervisory employees: shop-floor and non-managerial workers, about 81% of private jobs, near 33.8 hours against 34.3 for all employees.

• Manufacturing overtime: the only overtime series, collected from manufacturing plants for all employees and production workers.

• Aggregate weekly hours index: employment times hours, set to 100 in 2007, moving with the business cycle.

In the February 2024 report of March 8, 2024, total private hours edged up 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours after a 0.2-hour January drop. Manufacturing held at 39.9 hours as overtime rose by 0.2 hour to 3.0 hours, while production hours rose by 0.3 hour to 33.8 hours. January payrolls still added 229,000 jobs, since anyone paid for any part of the period still counts as employed. The lesson is that severe weather cuts paid hours, not jobs, and the dip reversed the next month, so it was no demand signal.

1. Reports: Each sampled site reports headcount, hours paid, payroll, and manufacturing overtime for the pay period including the 12th, weighted for selection chance. Atypical reports are set aside from the movement calculation, then added back.

1. Birth-death allowance: A modeled allowance covers jobs from business openings and closings the sample misses.

1. Basic-cell average: Cell average equals total hours paid divided by employees paid. For example, one plant with 400 workers paid for 16,400 hours and another with 600 workers paid for 23,400 hours averages 39.8 hours.

1. Monthly movement: The estimate keeps about 90% of the prior published value for continuity, then adds the sample change since the prior month.

1. Aggregation: Higher levels are employment-weighted means, so 1,000 jobs at 39.8 hours plus 9,000 jobs at 33.8 hours gives 34.4 hours.

1. Seasonal adjustment: Seasonal factors are recomputed each month with X-13ARIMA-SEATS software and applied to the latest three months. Manufacturing is adjusted in fine detail and total private is built from adjusted parts, with refinements for four- versus five-week intervals and floating holidays. Results are published both adjusted and unadjusted.