It is standard to claim that short sleep is on the rise. It is said that today’s typical North American sleeps 6.5 hours a day, down from 10 hours in the early 1900s. Such claims are often contested, and averages in any case are misleading. More certain is change at the extremes. Short sleep afflicts an expanding minority of the working population. Various factors are involved, from technological change to capitalist productivity demands. Weak trade unions and low rates of pay raise the demands on individual workers – the pressure to do overtime, or to take on multiple jobs. Such pressures recall those of the 19th century described by Karl Marx in ‘The Working Day’ (1867), but with less worker organisation to contain them. Noise pollution from contemporary transport infrastructure is an aggravating factor, along with ever more immersive electronic devices.

Short sleep is often coupled with irregular sleep. For a substantial minority, hours of rest change in quick succession. They involve departures from night-time sleeping, and inconstancy and uncertainty in location. The service sector offers many examples. The term ‘clopening’ describes shift patterns that involve a worker closing a business (a café, a bar) in the late evening and then opening it again the next morning, leaving the worker no time for a full night’s rest. Despite efforts to outlaw it, the practice remains widespread in North America and beyond.

Irregular sleep can itself be a source of exhaustion. Shift workers report it as among the most difficult aspects they face. Often, it corresponds to a lack of control, inhibiting the planning required to adapt. In precarious jobs, timetabling is often finalised at short notice. In the US, a quarter of service-sector workers get no more than 72 hours’ notice, according to recent research by the Harvard Kennedy School. Scheduling is often automatised, leaving no-one to complain to. The individual must adapt or risk their job; women and racial minorities are especially hard hit. In more affluent sectors, the rise of working from home adds its own disruption by eroding the boundary between work and repose.

A third contemporary trend less discussed is the desynchronisation of sleep. More than 10 per cent of UK workers do night shifts, in the care, nursing, emergency and transport sectors especially – a 3 per cent increase in five years. Such trends are pronounced in developing countries too. The outsourcing of call centres and IT services to eastern Europe and Asia has created groups of workers expected to live by the timezones of Western markets. A minority emerges, defined by its misalignment with local norms. As the pandemic pushes new kinds of service workers online – eg, in teaching or healthcare, and in the West as well as in its markets – a ‘24/7’ world looks increasingly near.