While it may be true that medieval peasants worked fewer hours - we need to remember the documentary evidence is fragmentary and subject to interpretation - it's also true that working 8 hours on a computer adjusting PowerPoint slides in a weatherproof office is considerably less onerous than spending six hours bent over a wooden plough while soaked with seemingly endless rain. The skeletons of medieval peasants clearly show how damaging such physical toil was and what a price they paid in physiological damage. Today most people are fat and indolent precisely because no meaningful exertion is every required of them. And that means, regardless of how many hours they work, their lives are clearly easier.