Industry: Workers break from the 9 to 5

The nine-to-five job is history, thanks to an quiet revolution which has led more than half of employees to work variable hours, according to a report today.

Traditional Monday-to-Friday working is still common, but now it is often nine-to-five "in name only", research by the Policy Studies Institute has found.

The proportion of employees accepting longer shifts rose from 30 per cent in 1984 to 56 per cent a decade later. Often the extra hours are unpaid, but may be matched by management flexibility in allowing workers to leave early occasionally when work allows.

Other forms of flexible labour, such as the use of short-term contracts, have also increased - but much less dramatically.

The report, Employers' Use of Flexible Labour by Bernard Casey, Hilary Metcalf and Neil Millward, was commissioned by the Department for Education and Employment. It involved analysis of the Labour Force Survey, Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and case studies in 24 workplaces.