The “Karoshi” Phenomenon is Now a Worldwide Problem

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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard.”

The “Karoshi” Phenomenon is Now a Worldwide Problem
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Reading time 3 minutes
Reading Time: 3 minutes

According to the World Health Organization, “working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard.”

The Japanese have a word for a phenomenon that distinguishes Japanese work culture: Karoshi (過労死). This word means “death from overwork.” Since the oil crisis of 1973, the country’s labor restructurings have forged labor environments where working more than 70 hours per week is seen as “normal” and even honorable. However, by the nineties, the ravages of this phenomenon were seen, with stories of employees falling dead in their offices after an extended working day or who decided to commit suicide because they could no longer bear the work pressure.

Since then, Japanese sociologists and researchers have studied this cultural phenomenon that, until recently, was believed to be unique to Japan. Such is the problem that the Ministry of Health of Japan legally recognized the existence of karoshi in 1987 as a severe social problem. Faced with the increase in deaths and suicides, the Japanese government created a helpline run by the National Defense Counsel for Victims of Karoshi, which receives between 100 and 300 calls each year, as reported by Carl Court in Wired. Officially, the Japanese government has registered around 200 claims for karoshi “work injuries” per year, although some activists say this figure falls short and estimate up to 10,000 deaths annually from karoshi. Court notes that this official number does not consider the number of irregular workers in Japan, which has increased rapidly since 1990.

More than thirty years later, we face a harsh reality: today, the karoshi phenomenon is global. A few weeks ago, I shared a report by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization in our newsletter, which warns that long work shifts increase deaths from cardiac disease and strokes. According to the WHO, overwork and work-related stress led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016.

This was the first global study that analyzes deaths and illnesses associated with excessive and prolonged work. The report concluded that working 55 hours or more per week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease. Another troubling fact published in the study is that the deaths often occur even decades later.

Why is this important?

Japan is commonly the first country coming to mind for examples of demanding work cultures. Even recently, Japanese companies have “forced” their employees to take vacation days. However, this phenomenon is not as unique to this country as many people would think. According to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), people work more than 50 hours a week in 11% of its member countries. In the Better Life Balance Index published by the OECD, the four countries where people work the most hours are Turkey, with 33% of employees, followed by Mexico (about 29%), Colombia (26.6%), and South Korea (25.2%). Japan is actually in the sixth position, with 17.9% of its employees.

While these figures are worrying, WHO warns that the pandemic is accelerating the increasing work hours. How many of us have not been tempted (or forced) to extend our working hours during the pandemic? Having the office at home makes it more challenging to set limits and establish a proper work-life balance that allows us to dedicate necessary parts of our time to leisure, personal care, family and friends. The problem is not just caused by employers demanding long working hours; it is a systemic problem, a culture in which productivity measures a person’s value.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the way many people work,” says Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO. However, while the pandemic has worsened the working conditions, health, and well-being of many people, it also has presented a window of opportunity to rethink how we work, learn, and relate. We have been working for more than 30 years brutally, to extreme exhaustion and, many times, without realizing it or asking ourselves if this is normal.

No, it is neither normal nor desirable. “Working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard,” warns Dr. Maria Neira, Director of the World Health Organization’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health. And you, how do you find yourself? Have you rethought your work habits? Has the way you work changed because of the pandemic?

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Karina Fuerte

(She/her). Editor in Chief at the Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education.

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0