(ECNS) -- A survey by China Youth Daily found that 72.6 percent of respondents worked overtime at least once a week, and more than five percent said they worked extra hours on a daily basis.
In the survey of 2,002 participants, 23.1 percent worked overtime three to four times a week, and 43.9 percent one to two times. It also showed that 73.5 percent worked an hour extra each week, 58.2 percent, one to two hours, and 15.3 percent, three hours.
Zhang Xian said she worked overtime almost every night for her previous employer, an advertising company. Now she works for a Fortune 500 company and feels happy to work no more than one hour extra.
Lv Hua has been a civil servant for 20 years in Qinhuangdao City of Hebei Province, and she seldom worked outside her scheduled hours. But at a certain time of the year, from Jan 1 to Jan 10, she had to work overtime, sometimes even overnight, to finish the annual financial statement.
The reasons for extended work are jobs unfinished (29.9 percent), to be more competitive (22.6 percent), to get overtime rates (18.1 percent), fear of leaving earlier than leaders still in the office (16.9 percent), and poor management as well as inefficiency (12.2 percent), according to the survey.
The study also found that 34.7 percent didn't get paid for working overtime and 33.7 percent received less pay than the law required.
Jia Yunfen, who worked for an English training center, said he declined to work overtime even though he was compensated.
In the same survey, 11.7 percent said they could work more effectively during the extra hours, while 27.4 percent said the opposite.
And as for the consequences of all that overtime, 61.1 percent said it affected their time with family, 49.6 percent said it negatively affected their general health, and 40.7 percent said it added to their stress levels. The overtime also forced 38.1 percent to neglect their personal hobbies.
Among the survey's respondents, 23 percent were from state-owned companies, 19.4 from foreign or joint ventures and 38 percent from the private sector.
