Weekend working in 21st century Britain: Does it matter for well- being?

On any given weekend, over a fifth of the UK labour force is at work, while more than half of working adults report working at the weekend at least some of the time. This is despite the fact that weekends are conventionally set aside as rest days. The question that this paper addresses is: does this matter? This paper adds to the literature by using two large panel datasets to analyse the effects of weekend working on eight different measures of subjective well-being in the UK. Unlike most previous literature on this topic, the analysis in this paper controls for individual fixed effects such that the results should not be confounded by time invariant omitted variables that differ between individuals. I find that weekend working does not affect how satisfied people are with their lives overall but it does have a significant impact on how satisfied they are with the amount of leisure time they have, with the results suggesting that the avoidance of weekend working is equivalent to working six fewer hours per week. Moreover, people working at the weekend report significantly lower happiness yesterday than non-weekend workers. These findings imply that, while weekend working is arguably good for productivity and hence welfare, such benefits come at a cost. Notwithstanding the fact that many people may be freely supplying their labour at weekends, actions aimed at limiting weekend working or mitigating its adverse effects will improve the overall well-being of workers