In 1900, when the average lifespan in the United States was forty-seven, when people started work at fourteen, worked sixty-hour weeks and had no possibility of retirement, the percentage of his lifetime that an average man would spend at work was about 25 per cent: the rest was spent sleeping, at home or as a child. Today that figure is about 10 per cent, because the average person lives to about eighty, spends about half his or her life in education and retirement, spends only a third of each day (8/24) and five-sevenths of each week at work.
