What Are Long Hours?

Callister (2004) notes that international researchers use different cut-off points to define short and long hours for individuals. For employees in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, 48 hours or more per week is usually considered to be long working hours. New Zealand research tends to use a 50 hours a week cut-off, with this being used by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and the Department of Labour (DoL) in their various papers and reports related to working hours, including the DoL (2006) Work-Life Balance report and the MSD Social Reports (2004, 2006). As such, for the purposes of the discussion in this paper, employees who work 50 hours or more are considered to be working long hours.