How Trump is making Americans’ 'endless grind' of work even worse

President Donald Trump gestures during a visit to Verst Logistics in Hebron, Kentucky, March 11, 2026. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque

Despite pledging to make life easier and affordable for working people during his reelection campaign, a new breakdown from The i Paper has revealed the ways in which President Donald Trump has made the "endless grind" even worse for American workers.

In the piece, published Monday, reporter Noah Berlatsky noted that "long hours, sparse vacation time and a bleak work-life balance" have long been accepted as the norm for many working Americans. Under Trump, the situation has managed to get even worse, as "Biden-era wage-over-inflation gains have been reversed, and unemployment has crept upwards," leaving workers with "even fewer options — and less opportunity to claw back some of their time."

"The United States is notorious for its endless grind," Berlatsky explained. "American employees work an average of 36.27 hours a week, while Germans work 29.66 and the British work 31.17, according to the International Labor Organization. The average full-time US employee worked around 8.49 hours each weekday in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, while full-time employees in the UK put in about 7.3 hours a day in a five-day week, the Office for National Statistics reported.

He added: "Lengthy working hours in the US are in large part a function of the fact that many Americans don’t take holiday. The US is the only advanced economy with no federally mandated paid vacation days. Eighty per cent of private-sector, full-time employees in the US are entitled to paid time off, but that varies wildly by industry... Even when workers do have paid time off, they often don’t use it. Half of American workers do not take all of the holiday time they have accrued, scholar Karen Tan wrote in The Conversation, thanks in part to a phenomenon known as 'vacation guilt.'"

Berlatsky further noted that under former President Joe Biden, significant improvements were seen, with unemployment reaching "historic lows," giving workers better leverage to demand "higher wages and better benefits." All of that has come to a grinding halt with Trump's return, with his "tariffs, wars, federal firings and attacks on immigrant labour" weakening the overall economy and creating an environment where "long-term unemployment is up and inflation is outpacing wages."

“Whenever job opportunities get worse,” Betsey Stevenson, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, explained. “What people end up sacrificing is work-life balance, because they’re desperate to have whatever job they can.”

"Progressive Democrats have tried to mandate two weeks of annual paid vacation for all full-time workers, but there’s little hope of the legislation moving forward under Trump and Republicans," he concluded. "So Americans continue to work and work, with little in the way of life balance and little prospect of improvement."

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