The workers themselves are feeling tired. No wonder people got excited about a recent UK study, which claimed that firms that reduced weekly hours by 20% (a four-day working week) had more revenue without losing revenue. Happy employees. In the absence of a four-day week, more Americans appear to choose to downshift by working part time, even when full-time work is available. This comes on top of the cool-leaving-and-lying-flat tendencies. It seems like the age of doing less has arrived. Even before Covid, Americans were putting in fewer hours. In fact, Americans have never spent so little time at work. So if they’re burnt out, it’s probably not a work problem.
The desire to work less is as old as labor itself. In 1928, British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that his grandchildren (he never had any) would only need to work 15-hour weeks because technology would do more of our work for us. While we still work more than 15 hours a week, he wasn’t completely wrong. There is a declining trend in working hours.
Technology has made labor more productive, the latest example being the lockdown-time technology that allows us to work from home, saving time on commuting, chit-chat and grooming, although Keynes certainly never Never imagined a smartphone that enables your boss to reach you. all hours.
A US study estimated that in 1965, men aged 21 to 65 worked an average of 51 hours a week for pay; By 2003 this had dropped to just 39.9 hours, and has remained stable since then. Women remain a small part of the labor force, but since the 1960s many more are working outside the home and working more part-time. The average working week for women increased from 20 to 26.3 hours by 2003 and has remained relatively flat since then. He also measured work around the home, such as housework, and found that there was also a big reduction due to technology. All forms of work were counted, with estimated working hours falling by 7.6 hours for men and 6.44 hours for women.
The advantage of less work is more comfort. Men’s leisure hours increased by about 20% between 1965 and 2003. Women received 10% more leave, although after the increase it began to decline again in the 1990s as helicopter parenting took hold and women spent more time caring for their children. Working women now spend almost twice as much time with their children as in the 1960s.
One surprise: men with less education worked more hours in 1965, but the trend has reversed and now higher earners work more. As of 2003, educated men worked five hours more per week than men without a high school degree. And it’s still true. In 2003, men with a high school education or less worked 3.6% fewer hours than more educated men; In 2018 the gap narrowed slightly to 1.6%. And perhaps the gap has narrowed even further: since the pandemic, educated men are more likely to remain silent.
Frankly, if we’re shooting for a four-day work week, the ones earning more are the ones who can work less. But this is not realistic for everyone. Many hourly workers who earn less cannot afford to reduce their hours by 20% in a week. And most salaried employees can’t deduct even that much. Even a four-day week can hurt the economy. Technology makes us more productive so we can create more in less time, but it’s unlikely those gains will be enough to compensate for 20% less work. The UK study suggests it is possible, but it was quite small and 88% of participating companies were in sectors that do not represent the larger economy. For most jobs, too little work means less output, which means fewer goods and services. This further exacerbates the labor shortage and drives up inflation, making everyone poorer. Companies in the UK study also complained that the four-day working week caused a lot of confusion as the rest of the world worked five days. Those who let employees choose their days off had coordination problems.
So the US economy is not ready to reduce work by 20%. But there is a tendency for people to work less and still feel tired. Why? How are more people burning out if they are working less and have more leisure time than previous generations?
Maybe it’s because work hours have plummeted that it seems like we’re never getting a real vacation. Parents spend more time on childcare than on their own children. We also spend our free time differently. Even if we have more of it, leisure may not be as comfortable as it was before. We use time to spend staring at screens and playing adrenaline-fueled video games, and spend less time reading or spending time with people. These tendencies are associated with greater anxiety and unhappiness.
Perhaps how we spend our non-working time is what tires people out, not working hours. Work-from-home may have made it worse by increasing screen time. Which is ironic. Keynes expected technology to free us from work. And it’s given us more free time, but it’s also making us feel overworked and unhappy.
©Bloomberg
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