Average number of weekly hours worked in the U.S. and USSR 1970-1988
Additionally, this data is for wage and salary workers in the U.S. only, as very few in the Soviet Union could have been considered self-employed given the socialist economic system. The gap between work weeks increases significantly when Soviet figures are compared with self-employed workers in the U.S., where average work weeks in 1970 for those in agriculture were 51 hours, and for those in non-agricultural work they were 45 hours, although both dropped to 47.5 and 41 respectively by 1988.