Been feeling a little tired lately? Find that life is becoming one big blur of work and sleep and work – with little time for enjoyment? Welcome to the U.S. work force.

For the past few years, periodic reports suggest that U.S. workers are putting in longer and longer hours on the job. A new report by the International Labor Organization proves the suspicions.

Headlined "Americans work longest hours among industrialized countries," the new statistical analysis of global labor trends tells how U.S. workers are working longer and longer hours each year – while the rest of the industrialized world is demanding less and less hours from workers.

"U.S. workers put in the longest hours on the job in industrialized nations, clocking up nearly 2,000 hours per capita in 1997, the equivalent of almost two working weeks more than their counterparts in Japan where annual hours worked have been gradually declining since 1980," according to an ILO statement on the study.

A 4 percent rise in annual hours worked per person between 1980 and 1997 in the U.S. – from 1,883 hours per year to 1,966 – "runs contrary to a world-wide trend in industrialized countries" where work hours have remained steady or declined in recent years, the ILO added. For comparison, Japanese work hours per year – once the world's highest – dropped from 2,121 hours in 1980 to 1,889 in 1995, a 10 percent decline.

The numbers from European countries make Americans look like "workaholics." For example, hours worked in 1997 for Norway and Sweden averaged, respectively, 1,399 and 1,552 per year. France, which recently introduced legislation to limit the work week to 35 hours, averaged 1,656 hours in 1997, and Germany averaged just under 1,560 hours.

Canadians saw their yearly work hours decline by more than a week between 1980 and 1996, with an average of 1,784 hours worked in 1980 compared with 1,732 in 1996. In eastern Asia, both Australia and its neighbor New Zealand averaged nearly 1,850 work hours in 1996.

Figures from South Korea show a steady decline from 1980 levels of 2,064 hours to 1,892 hours in 1996. Other Asian developing nations have high work hours, but their figures are all pre-1995 and no reliable recent data is available.

In Latin America and Caribbean nations, workers work about 1,800 hours per year, with only modest declines from 1980 levels, the study reports.

"The number of hours worked is one important indicator of a country's overall quality of life," commented ILO Director-General Juan Samovia. "While the benefits of hard work are clear, working more is not the same as working better," he added.

The ILO report comes at a time when U.S. workers are increasingly concerned about the effect of longer work weeks on quality of life issues. The increasing work week has been implicated in problems from juvenile delinquency to family stress and suicide.

U.S. labor unions are the only line of defense against the lengthening work week – ensuring that workers have some protections for refusal of overtime – and the major guarantor that workers who work overtime receive premium pay for the effort.

Despite the longest working hours, U.S. workers continue to lead the world in productivity, the study continued, but people in many nations work shorter hours and are starting to close the gap. ILO Economist Lawrence Jeff Johnson noted that in 1996 the U.S. led the world in terms of value added per person employed and in terms of value added per hour worked. But recent indicators show other nations are catching up fast.

The productivity race is like a never-ending marathon in which the U.S. worker today is ahead of the pack, but a significant number of competitors – notably Japan, the Republic of Korea and the major European countries – are picking up speed with the U.S. in their sights," Johnson said.