The bitter irony of the great squeeze for the middle class is that they're working longer hours to make the same, or less, money. Even as median wages have stagnated for the general workforce and fallen for men in the last 30 years, the share of workers putting in more than 50 hours a week has steadily climbed with each passing decade. This has been especially true of middle-class men and professional men and women.
But even this graph from Mother Jones and others like it might underestimate the surge in working hours. That's because after you factor in the part-time work, the overtime work, the double-shifts, and the skipped vacations, there's another category that might not be receiving enough attention. Home work.
Since before the downturn and through the recession, more and more people are bringing their work home, or never leaving the house to get work done in the first place. Self-employed workers are mostly likely to work from the house or apartment, and nearly 70 percent do. This will not shock you. What might surprise you is that 40 percent of multiple jobholders do some of their work from home, and more than one in three workers with a bachelor's degree and higher have been taking home work for the last decade. This graph, showing share of employed people who do some or all of their work at home tells the story.