Jeb has a point. Some people really do need to work more

Economics, Labor Studies, Pethokoukis

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So here’s what Jeb Bush told the New Hampshire Union Leader — which is being used by Democrats and at least one Republican 2016 rival to portray Bush as an out-of-touch patrician who wants to put the riding crop to American workers:

My aspirations for the country, and I believe we can achieve it, is for 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see,” Bush said. “Which means we have to be a lot more productive. Workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we are going to get out of this rut that we’re in.”

His 4% growth formula is correct: The US labor force must grow faster than current demographic trends, and productivity growth must accelerate significantly from its apparent decade-long torpor. America must work more. As AEI’s Andrew Biggs has noted: “Today, the typical American retires at age 63 and can expect to survive until age 83, meaning that person will spend roughly one-third of his adult life in retirement. Reversing this trend toward early retirement is perhaps the best solution to the fiscal pressures created by the aging of our society.”
But must the average American with a job right now put in more hours? As Fortune magazine points out, individual Americans work plenty:

Americans logged 1,788 hours of work in 2013, one of the highest totals among industrialized nations, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Areport from tax and consulting firm EY in May found that 58% of managers in the U.S. say they work more than 40 hours a week. By comparison, just over a third of managers in the United Kingdom and just less than a fifth of managers in China said the same. In the U.S., close to one-third of managers reported an increase in hours in the past five years. A Gallup poll from last summer found that the average American works about 47 hours each week—nearly a full day longer than the traditional work week.

But consider this: In 2006, the low point of the past decade, there were 4.1 million Americans who worked “part-time for economic reasons” — either due to “slack work or business conditions” or “could only find part-time work.” Today that number is 6.5 million. And about a quarter of part-timers say they want full-time work, a share still about double what it was before the Great Recession. Clearly a lot of Americans feel like they need to work more hours. But the anemic economy isn’t providing enough opportunity.