Unpaid Overtime: Measuring its Contribution to the UK Industries’ Output

Unpaid overtime in Britain has been excessive. The article measures the contribution of unpaid overtime in relation to UK industries economic output (Gross Value Added-GVA) for the period 2002-2012, using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS-Blue Book), capturing the different patterns before and after the 2007-8 crisis. Measuring unpaid overtime’s contribution and the other parts of working day has important implication on labour’s remuneration. The paper adopts an out-put-based approach evaluation of unpaid labour. A decomposed working day is therefore examined by employing statistical regression methods (Pooled OLS,LASSO and FGLS) to account for unpaid overtime’s contribution to the UK industries’ output (GVA). The results display a strong link between unpaid overtime and GVA, and particularly its post-crisis contribution to GVA is significant in contrast to the weak pre-crisis relationship