In recent years, an increasing number of individuals are working overtime. This essay will discuss the reasons behind this trend and problems may cause for people.
Although there are many reasons that prolong the duration of work, first and foremost, economic pressures require more work to earn enough. Accommodation, food, clothing expenses are getting more high priced day by day, due to affording these expenses people settle for working longer hours. For example, in metropolitan areas, people take night shifts to get double time pay, in order to pay high rental costs and increasing food prices. The other contributing factor is high competence in job market. Demand is getting higher for vacancies, as tech developers, teachers or nurses. People need to be more qualified for their jobs, due to not to lose their jobs, because employees can be replaced with someone with higher qualifications by their managers. For instance, to prevent this issue, individuals may work extended hours, such as working on weekends or answering customer calls in their vacations.
Working longer hours causes a number of health issues. Nowadays most notable health problems are high-level anxiety, major depression and weakening eyesight. To be more clear, people fear losing their job because of high demand. This causes them to work longer hours and besides, they work with a sense of fear and it turns into a high level of stress which at the same time, stress itself creates anxiety, after this cycle people face major depression. Meanwhile, sitting for long hours in front of a computer and focusing on the screen for an extended period weakens human eyesight. For example, some researches have been shown that people are buying more antidepressants and glasses from 2000’s.
To sum up, many individuals are working extended hours due to economic pressures and higher demands in the job market. As a consequence, physical and mental health issues increase.