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Is Your Job Killing You? All the Ways Overworking Can Destroy Your Health — and What You Can Do About It

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Burning the midnight oil may fatten your paycheck, but your health could be paying the price.

In 2024, Gallup found that the average full-time worker in the US clocked 42.9 hours a week. But millions are logging far more, and the toll is greater than just burnout.

At one Midwestern investment bank, junior employees were allegedly forced to endure grueling 20-hour days — a grind so extreme it sent at least two to the hospital, including one with a failed pancreas.

They’re not alone. In recent years, several cases have emerged in which employees died after being pushed to work 100 hours a week or more, a troubling trend that’s prompted some companies to rethink their breakneck expectations.

Just last year, a 35-year-old Bank of America investment banker named Leo Lukenas III died of a blood clot while job-hunting, bogged down by the stress of his 100+ hour weeks.

The Post consulted seven health experts to find out what spending 60, 70 or even 80+ hours a week behind your desk can do to your body if you’re not careful. Spoiler alert: It’s not pretty. (Read more from “Is Your Job Killing You? All the Ways Overworking Can Destroy Your Health — and What You Can Do About It” HERE)

Least Essential? Some Agencies Have 0 Employees on Job During Slimdown

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Photo Credit: APFiscal hawks say the silver lining to the partial government shutdown, which is entering its second week of scaled-back services, could be the picture of government waste it paints for taxpayers.

A look through the shutdown contingency plans of the federal government shows some little-known commissions and agencies — like the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — don’t have anybody reporting for work during the partial shutdown.

The ability of the government to run without any of the people from any of these agencies on the clock is prompting some watchdog groups to question why, then, do the agencies need to exist in the first place?

“Think of all the money we could save as a nation,” Judicial Watch said in an Oct. 7 post. “Besides bringing attention to these largely unheard of agencies, the shutdown – caused by Congress’s inability to agree on a funding bill – is also shedding light on just how bloated the federal government is, with an astounding workforce that’s seen nearly 800,000 furloughed this week.”

Government bodies that have exactly zero people on the job this week include the USDA Risk Management Agency, where all 430 employees are furloughed, and the Federal Maritime Commission, where all 120 workers are furloughed.

Read more from this story HERE.

August Jobs Report: We’re ‘Dead in the Water’

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Obama_jobsOne of the first economists I read after the monthly, “official” jobs report comes out is James Pethokoukis of AEI’s public policy blog.

Pethokoukis has a nice way of breaking through all the spin and revealing an employment picture that goes inside the numbers to tell us the true nature of the jobs market.

After August’s horrible numbers, Pethokousis doesn’t seem optimistic.

How do you know the August jobs report was pretty bad? When the best thing you can say is that it might have met Wall Street expectations if not for a temporary shutdown in the porn industry last month. (The motion picture and sound recording industry lost 22,000 jobs in August, according to the BLS.) Sure, the White House can argue, as economic adviser Jason Furman did right after the report’s release, that the “incoming economic data broadly suggest that the recovery continues to make progress.” But consider the following:

1. This was the jobs report that was supposed to reflect an economy kicking into higher gear. Goldman Sachs, for instance, was looking for 200,000 net new jobs. And whisper estimates were even higher. Instead, the economy added just 169,000 jobs vs. the 180,000 consensus forecast. HERE.

Employers Dropping Coverage for Thousands of Spouses Over ObamaCare Costs

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Republican lawmakers are raising new concerns about ObamaCare after several large employers announced they are dropping health coverage for some employee spouses due to rising costs under the new law.

Both the University of Virginia and UPS told their employees recently they are no longer offering spousal coverage to those able to obtain insurance elsewhere; meaning thousands of Americans will no longer be able to choose the benefits they prefer.

UVA said Wednesday this is only one of many “major changes” coming to their health plans as a result of ObamaCare. The university says the changes are necessary because the law is projected to add $7.3 million to the cost of the university’s health plan in 2014 alone.

“The modified plan will provide new options and reward those who participate in wellness programs,” UVA’s Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Susan Carkeek said in a press release. “But we must make adjustments or face millions of dollars in rising costs, fees and taxes that would be passed along to employees.”

Similarly, UPS partially blamed the new health law for the change, which is estimated to affect roughly 15,000 employee spouses.

Read more from this story HERE.

Wal-Mart Says No To Living Wage, Could Leave Washington DC

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Photo Credit: APThe country’s largest private employer dared Washington D.C. lawmakers to call its bluff. Just 24 hours before a key vote, executives and lobbyists from Wal-Mart issued the following threat to D.C. council members “try to force us to pay our employees a living wage, and we will not build stores in the District.”

The council was voting to pass a living wage bill, which would require retailers such as Wal-Mart, Lowes, Costco and Home Depot to pay higher wages to their employees. Wal-Mart’s plan was to pack up and leave, promising to cancel plans for at least three of the six Wal-Mart stores if the proposal becomes law. One lawmaker said it felt like Wal-Mart was “sticking guns to council members’ heads.”

Still D.C. council members held their ground and voted 8-5 this afternoon to require retailers with corporate sales of $one billion or more and operating space of 75,000 sq ft or larger to pay their employees no less than $12.50 an hour.

That would equate to a $26,000 annual salary in a town listed as number nine on a list of most expensive places to live in the country.

But the eight votes still leaves the council one vote shy of being able to override a potential veto from D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, who has pushed Wal-Mart to plan stores in the city in underserved neighborhoods.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Attempting to Ban as Racist Criminal Background Checks For New Hires

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Photo Credit: brettneilson

Are criminal background checks racist? That’s the startling new legal theory that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unveiled this week in lawsuits against employers. It’s another example of how President Obama’s appointees are using regulation to achieve policy goals they can’t get through Congress.

On Tuesday the EEOC accused retailer Dollar General DG -0.04% and a U.S. unit of German car maker BMW BMW.XE +1.26% of violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act by using criminal checks as part of their employment decisions. The logic? Blacks have higher conviction rates than whites, and therefore criminal checks discriminate against blacks.

The EEOC alleges that BMW discriminated against blacks because it screened contractors in South Carolina for convictions for “Murder, Assault & Battery, Rape, Child Abuse, Spousal Abuse (Domestic Violence), Manufacturing of Drugs, Distribution of Drugs, [and] Weapons Violations,” and more blacks than whites are convicted of those crimes.

The suit says 70 black BMW contractors and 18 non-black contractors had criminal convictions, and the company declined to hire them. The suit seeks redress, such as hiring the plaintiffs, back pay, legal costs and more, but only for the black contractors.

In its Dollar General suit, the agency says that 10% of blacks and 7% of non-black applicants failed the retailer’s criminal screening. The EEOC calls that three-percentage-point difference a “gross disparity” that is “statistically significant” enough to qualify as discrimination.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Hidden Jobless Disaster

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The market tanked Wednesday on bad preliminary job news. And so, when Friday’s jobs report is released, the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs will come in for close scrutiny. Then again, they always attract the most attention. Even the Federal Reserve focuses on the unemployment rate, announcing on a number of occasions that a rate of 6.5% will indicate when it is time to start raising interest rates and winding down the Fed’s easy-money policies.

Yet the unemployment rate is not the best guide to the strength of the labor market, particularly during this recession and recovery. Instead, the Fed and the rest of us should be watching the employment rate. There are two reasons.

First, the better measure of a strong labor market is the proportion of the population that is working, not the proportion that isn’t. In 2006, 63.4% of the working-age population was employed. That percentage declined to a low of 58.2% in July 2011 and now stands at 58.6%. By this measure, the labor market’s health has barely changed over the past three years.

Photo Credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin: “Proud” that stimulus produced jobs at $738k each (+video)

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Photo credit: merfam

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told The Daily Caller that he is “very proud” of the Economic Recovery Act of 2009 that put 65,000 people to work with $48 billion in federal funds for the Department of Transportation, amounting to $738,461 per job.

The Recovery Act of 2009, which in total cost taxpayers $825 billion, has been criticized because it did not prevent the unemployment rate from rising above 8 percent, contrary to what the Obama administration predicted.

“Yeah, we spent $48 billion and we put 65,000 people to work in 15,000 projects in two years with no problems,” LaHood told The Daily Caller in a video interview in Alexandria, Va., on Friday. “I’m very proud of that. I know that the governors can spend this money because over two years we gave them $48 billion, they created 65,000 jobs in 15,000 projects. This is doable. We’re going to get the money out and get people to work.”

TheDC also asked LaHood about the Obama administration’s decision to send an additional $473 million in unspent earmarks to states.

“You know what? These are old earmarks. There are earmarks that were set aside by members of Congress going back several years,” LaHood said. “We’re in the no earmark era. There are no more earmarks. This money needs to be spent because we need to get people to work.”

Another Obama first: Americans now toil over half the year to pay for unconstitutional government

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This year, Americans have to work until July 15 to pay for the burden of government, more than six months.

In a new report, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) has calculated that Americans will spend a total of 197 days toiling to pay for the cost of government.

“Cost of Government Day is the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burden imposed by government at the federal, state and local levels,” reads the report.

The report, Cost of Government Day, shows that Americans will work 88 days to pay for federal spending; 40 days for state and local spending; and 69 days for total regulatory costs.

“From a different perspective, the cost of government makes up 54.0 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP),” reads the report. “What’s more, the largest tax hike in the nation’s history is scheduled to take place at the end of 2012 unless Congress acts to protect taxpayers. If this tax increase is allowed to hit, COGD [Cost of Government Day] could permanently be pushed back into August and beyond.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: politibear