Question: How do you know it’s a really bad time for the U.S. economy? Answer: When overtime suddenly becomes a hot-button topic.

Yes, it’s a tough economy and job market, but both of those factors also mean that even the great majority of Americans who have jobs are worried about keeping them. And that in turn means that many people are working longer hours and putting in a lot more time on the job.

Last week I made reference in a blog post to a Japanese man who worked himself to death working overtime. The Washington Post followed up with a staff-written story on this issue, and although you can make a case that the situation is not applicable here in the U.S., there are some troubling workplace issues that certainly are.

“Death from too much work is so commonplace in Japan that there is a word for it—karoshi,” the Post story said, “… [and] for decades, the Japanese government has been trying, and largely failing, to set limits on work and on overtime. Twice in the past year, Toyota—the world’s largest carmaker and a much-admired company in Japan—has been publicly embarrassed by the deaths of employees who worked what Japanese authorities have judged to be killingly long hours.”

Here’s that part of the Post story that sounded familiar to me, and maybe to you: “Unpaid overtime is routine in factories and offices across Japan. At Toyota, it had been built into factory life—in the form of long, after-hours quality-control sessions that were supposedly voluntary—and was considered a key to the company’s success. Participation in the sessions, though, often figured in a worker’s prospects for promotion and higher pay.”

Working longer, without pay, to curry favor and perhaps get a promotion is a longstanding workforce practice. I’ve certainly done it before, and getting overtime was never, ever an option in those situations. But now, a larger issue is driving the overtime debate here in the U.S.—the push for flexible working arrangements. Flexibility blurs the traditional lines between work life and personal life, and that can be a problem when it comes to hourly employees.

As a Miami Herald story today points out, “Employees seeking work/life balance clearly want to be compensated for hours on the clock, especially those who are living without the high salaries that give executives an exemption from overtime. But in an evolving, always-on workplace where employees routinely put in extra hours and shoot off e-mails late at night from mobile devices, where the workday begins and ends has become an issue for employers of all sizes.”

Legislators are also getting more involved, with House Democrats looking closer at wage and hour issues as well as the issue of flexible work arrangements. Plus, there’s more litigation and legal focus regarding overtime, both nationally and in states including California.

“Judges are complaining that overtime suits are clogging the federal courts,” the Miami Herald story notes, “particularly in Florida, which leads the nation in these wage-and-hour cases. Some of the momentum comes from the attorneys who find wage-and-hour violations are far more lucrative than harassment or discrimination lawsuits. Lawyers estimate that over the last few years firms have paid out more than $1 billion annually to resolve these claims.”

So clearly, overtime is a serious issue—whether it be in Japan, where there is a history of OT-related deaths, or here in the U.S., where it can add up to many millions of dollars in legal settlements. I wish I could say that these are isolated incidents, but they’re not, and I fear that the worse the economic situation gets, the more of these stories we will likely see and hear. Stay tuned.