This paper describes trends in average weekly hours of market work per person and per family in
the United States between 1950 and 2005. We disaggregate married couple households by skill
level to determine if there is a pattern in the hours of work by wives and husbands conditional on
either husband’s wages or on husband’s educational attainment. The wage measure of skill allows
us to compare our findings to those of Juhn and Murphy (1997), who report on trends in family
labor using a different data set. The educational measure of skill allows us to construct a longer
time series. We find several interesting patterns. The married women with the largest increase in
market hours are those with high-skilled husbands. When we compare households with different
skill mixes, we also find dramatic differences in the time paths, with higher skill households having
the largest increase in average hours over time.