Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day | Hacker News Reader

Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day

theguardian.com

177 pointssmackay80 comments

When I was working a blue-collar, industrial job, I would be happy to work 10 or 12 hour days. Usually the schedule was 4 10s, with the Mondays and Fridays rotating to give a four-day weekend every other week. Of course, longer days meant overtime pay, too, if it added up to more than 40 hours in the week. I was also commuting about two hours a day, so shorter days didn't really give me any extra free time (downside of government holidays was that they only paid 8 hours, so you'd end up still working 4 days, just for 8 hours each instead of 10).

Working as a programmer now, I find that I mostly can put in about 4 hours of real work in a day, before my brain is mush. Although there are other blessed days when I get in the groove and have plenty of work to do with no interruptions, and I might work steady for 12 or 15 hours straight. It takes something of a miracle for this to occur, though, since two or more 30 minute meetings, or having to bounce around a couple different projects doing email support can wreck any attempt at getting into a flow for the day.

Physical labor might be strenuous, but I generally find it to be less exhausting than mental labor.

I fondly remember digging trenches[1] in a hot summer. It was the most painful thing I ever did, but I approached levels of zen I rarely have now. Everybody is built differently, but there's something deeply good about physical exhaustion. When you know the job, you get in flow easily. When done you feel all reset, the next day you feel a bit sore but it's the good kind, you even anticipate it.

[1] And if some kind of tasks are too brutal, there's always swimming (or even qigong).

You may only be typing code or reading docs 4 hours a day, but I'll bet you do useful thinking when you're not at your desk.

Mental labor is hard, but learning I find fairly easy and quite relaxing. I only do about 2 hours or so productive mental labor / output a day, the rest of it I spend self training and learning. I honestly can't imagine how far I would be behind my peers if I didn't do that.

Sometimes I do a fair amount of training / mentoring for junior engineers as well. That can be pretty relaxing too and productive for the company.

I'm working as a remote programmer with a 9 hour time difference from my colleagues. It's been a real hassle to organise my life because our team likes to pair program a lot. This has meant some pretty bizarre schedules for me.

Lately, I've been experimenting with a split schedule. I work 8-12 in my morning time zone solo, then I work 5-10 with a 1 hour dinner break in my evening. This gives me 3-4 hours of pairing (depending on how my partner and I schedule lunch/dinner). Between the hours of 12-5, I do some cycling, go shopping, do some cooking, and importantly have a 1 hour nap.

While it's not ideal (would love to get in a few more hours of pairing), from my own personal perspective it has been extremely good. I am able to concentrate fully for the entire day. I never feel tired at work any more. The nap is amazing!

Of course, it is 11 am and I'm writing a post on HN (bad Mike...)

I used job hop every 1-2 years looking for the perfect work environment. I couldn't find one until I started working as remote developer where the only thing that matters are results. My personal turnover is down: I've had the same job for seven years.

If you leave at the same time every day YOU ARE A SEAT WARMER. I remember sitting in a cubicle having completed all my work for the day, but couldn't leave at 3pm because it would look bad. That was my own personal hell because efficiency did not reward me with more personal time.

YOU ARE A SEAT WARMER.

Yeah or maybe you have kids.

I read that the opposite way -- GP doesn't seem to be talking about staying late, but rather leaving early.

The accusation is against the company, which forces you to conform to the clock.

[Admittedly, the poster worded it a bit awkwardly]

after almost burning out at my previous job (mo-thu 9 hrs + 1 hour break, so 10 hours at the office, friday until 3pm) i decided on a 30-hour week at my current job, 5x6 hours - with aliquot salary of course and flexible work time.

i couldn't be happier. sure, i'm not earning as much as i could (though i earn as much for 30hrs as for 42hrs at my previous job - living expenses are higher though, but it's enough to get me through the day), but the overall increase in quality and happiness is well worth it. i'm more concentrated and productive, instead of just looking at the clock and wishing for the bell to ring. if i can't concentrate at all i leave earlier and when i'm motivated and productive i stay longer - win/win situation for me and my employer, i'd say.

i'm pretty sure i get more work done in those 6hrs than during the 9 hour day on my earlier job, and more important: i don't completely despair in the evening, close to tears because i don't know how to get through another day in the office. to the contrary: i love the work, i love the job (i also love the coffee machine and ping pong table in the cellar).

I am applying for 4 hour job with option to work more, when needed (4-6 hours per day, sometimes 8 hours). I producing better code and I still working faster than others (moreover, our customers prefers my code), so I have 2x higher rate, so my salary is a bit higher, not lower.

How did you find or negotiate such an arrangement?

There seem to be very few non-40-hour software engineering positions available, even though many of us would happily trade away some salary for quality of life.

Small companies can be flexible. Large companies have to deal with rules written by people too far removed from your boss.

Work in the public sector (in my case a university).

Nursing is a _hard_ job, and tired/stressed people make mistakes. I would be interested in seeing data on patient outcomes before and after this change.

I was reading an informed opinion recently that longer shifts are much better for nursing, in that there's a lot of lost efficiency and lost knowledge during shift changes. Perhaps limiting the total number of hours worked in a week, rather than the length of any one individual shift, might be better? This person's opinion was that tiredness was not as big an issue as it's made out to be -- though I'm personally skeptical of that, and would be surprised if statistics back it up, it does seem to be a view I hear from some medical professionals.

There is two ways to deal with that problem, either fewer handoffs or better handoffs. I suspect focusing on more efficient handoffs and practicing more may be better than simply having longer shifts. Because 6h vs 12h shifts might cut handoff mistakes in half, but with 6h shifts good record keeping becomes more obviously important, and fewer things need to be communicated at handoff aka 6h worth of info vs 12h worth of info.

Shifts (being groups of workers that start and finish at a particular time en masse) themselves are probably contrary to good practice wrt patient care. If the whole shift changes then it seems there would be a substantial discontinuity in care; you'd want people to have staggered work patterns so in any hour there is always a substantial proportion of staff who were there the previous hour.

Unless you have many-to-one carers-to-patients then it wouldn't matter so much.

It seems that some medical professionals think they're super-human. A statistic I've seen cited was that the same number of mistakes were made during the first eight hours of a shift as during the one hour following those first eight. Basically, the rules apply to medicine like everywhere else: productivity (or whatever you'd want to call it in this case), drops off sharply after eight hours.

There is a control care center with an 8 hour schedule, and patient outcomes will be explicitly compared between the two.

These results are super interesting, but I wonder how much can be attributed to the Hawthorn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect). I.e. will this result be generalizable and stable over time.

I'd expect the Hawthorne Effect to lead to more stress...

This could be inverting cause and effect. Perhaps those looking for 6-hour days are the ones more likely to want a long-term job. Those wanting "the next big thing" will work long hours until either it hits or they move on in a year.

How would this model work for a startup where people often put in 60+ hours a week?

It's fine to let public workers like the geriatric nurses in the article do 6-hour shifts as long as you have the budget to hire extra staffers to cover the lost hours.

And, of course, that extra budget comes out of the pockets of private sector workers and businesses in taxes.

Much of software engineering (and probably other white collar work) is subconscious thought that is invisibly churning in your brain. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to speed it up. So working more hours isn't helpful because a lot of the delay is waiting for your subconscious.

https://twitter.com/codequalified/status/627113899754717184

You're right. Sadly most of us do not work software development jobs. We work in typing factories. The difference is that a software development job is about finishing the program on deadline. Instead we're expected to be present so that we can be typing in some kind of editor most of the time, to remind the rest of the product team that software work is happening as they speak. The engineering manager can ask us to be present for more time, but I can't bring myself to physically think for more than 6 hours at a stretch, so it leads to the first and last 2 hours of the day basically being wasted time.

I'd be more enthusiastic about it if we were solving interesting problems or learning new tools, but I'm basically grinding away at the exact same problems I was solving a year ago, so there's nothing interesting about the work. It's just a typing factory.

I get most of my ideas when I take breaks.

So, they work less, but they had to hire more people, at the same salary. Operating Costs are going up. Who is paying for that? Tax payers of course! Most of which have to work more than 6 hrs to pay for those kind of politics.

Tax payers like me, who will grow old and need those carers to be doing a good job. Good use of taxpayer money!

They also need a sustainable pension and savings plan, if you divert too much taxes out of that you'll end up actually needing that care much more than you think.

Some of those systems don't work in the long run, the rent control in Sweden results in each available apartment getting thousands of requests with people actually waiting decades to get an apartment, and this isn't some low income housing this is just because the majority of the apartments in places like Stockholm are rent controlled and managed by the government.

Rent control, and price controls more generally, are stupid. It doesn't solve the problem of demand being far higher than supply, which is why it never really works.

I just get sad every time I see it.

In the UK, there is Council Housing, this may be a good alternative to rent control because it provides housing at a nominal cost and gives the private landlords some competition. The only problem with this type of offering is it will stick in the craw of the American psyche who abhor the government competing against the private sector.

Rents do get bid up due to things like the minimum wage rising. This is because the power relationship between landlord and tenant is heavily skewed in favour of the landlord. The employee/employer relationship also suffers from the same disease.

Disclosure: I'm a US/UK dual citizen, and a landlord myself.

"because it provides housing at a nominal cost and gives the private landlords some competition."

Sincere question as I don't know much about the UK rental market: why aren't the private landlords in this segment of the market competing with each other? Is it difficult to build additional rental housing cheaply enough?

But do you agree that for some white collar jobs, if done efficiently, 6 hours per day is enough? I would prefer to have 6 hours day and be paid less.

Absolutely. 'Moving the needle' doesn't require long days, instead it requires discipline an focus on doing the one thing that will move your project forward. From experience at large companies I think most people waste 4 to 6 hours a day in pointless meetings, dealing with low ROI work items or looking at Facebook. Some of the self-made wealthiest people I know certainly didn't work 8 hours every day to get there, instead they were focused and masters of delegation and emotional intelligence.

I've rarely met anyone that has actually "worked" a full 8 hours. The marathon work days where you actually do 8, and more likely 16, are few and far between. Once you exclude the coffee breaks, snack breaks, stretch breaks, brain breaks, etc. you easily get back to 6 hours. Hell if you are on here and at work you are technically not working. Most managers will overlook the occasional reddit or YC page load because they know it's hard to "crush it" for hours straight.

This article is about nurses, though. In the US many ER nurses work 12 hour shifts and they obviously don't have the option of personal downtime. It's likely that as "computer" people we're already reaping much of the benefit discussed.

This article is about nurses in care homes. They aren't under the same constraint as an ER nurse.

Reason why ER nurses work 12 is continuance of care. You're better off being looked after by 2 shifts who are familiar with your case rather than 3 or 4. More people just add complexity

In Sweden "work" entails 8hours + 1hour set aside for obligatory break time. Is it different in the states?

Also, I can't see how 6hours would mean no stretch/brain breaks.

In the US, "work" is split into "exempt" and "non-exempt" status. "Non-exempt" workers are paid by the hour and have mandatory benefits if they work 40 hours and overtime pay if they work more than 40, so most employers will aim for 35 or so.

"Exempt" workers, which is most of us in the tech industry, are paid a salary and have essentially no limit to the hours that may be asked of us.

> and have essentially no limit to the hours that may be asked of us.

You may be asked, but do you really have to accept? (I'm asking from Europe) It sounds insane to sell 24 of your hours per day for any typical salary?

Nobody HAS to accept the working hours required by their employer. You're always free to quit and try to find another job that requires fewer hours.

But how can you make the contract (even if it's not formal) in which the employer pays X dollars fixed and the employee "has to work as much unspecified amount of work"? If the employee sells his work, he's selling without the possibility to measure how much he sells? Isn't it absurd? Or is it specified as "after 50 hours per week you can really go home?"

Welcome to "at will" employment. Besides some very specific exceptions, including race, gender, etc., employers are free to fire you for any reason or for no reason. Similarly, you are free to quit for any reason or no reason.

I'm amazed that the apparent "high skilled professionals" are satisfied with such vague conditions under which they sell themselves. It doesn't sound professional at all not having the limits and not organizing the protection of the profession. Please excuse me, that's how it appears in some European countries where what the rights are protected by the organizations of professionals (or even workers) and at the latest level by the laws.

That's why we need reform of the Fair Labor Standards Act to do a number of things including, but not limited to the following:

1. Abolish "At-will" employment and replace it with "Just Cause". This will bring the US in line with the rest of the developed world.

2. Implement working time restrictions similar to the European Working Time Directive for both exempt, and non-exempt employees.

We have been in a race to the bottom with regard to labor law over the last 30 years.

You're absolutely right. I get to work at 8 and start to lose steam around 1 (hence why I'm here). I would gladly buy an extra two hours in return for the expectation that work is for work goofing around is for home.

I think the contemporary startup idea that people have to be "working and playing" at the office for 10-14 hours a day to make anything significant happen is at worst, misguided, and, to a cynic like me, just a way to grind people out of your company before they can vest any significant amount of equity.

An equally cynical explanation is that they do it to kill anything you have going on outside of work (social life, side projects), which could compete with work for your attention.

Except that nobody's actually that interested in you.

It's not that misguided. I'm one of those people who can't really work full steam for many hours, so to get 6 real hours out of me, I need to be in the office for about 10 hours.

You are the reason for all the pain and suffering in the world.

Kidding.

I'm not completely disparaging the long workday and loads of perks to keep you at the office. It is nice to have good food nearby most hours of the day, and amenities such as gyms help coalesce my time at the office around the "productive" part of my day. Where it falls apart is when managers have to justify their employees' work: even if the 6hr worker and the 10hr worker are equally productive, they're going to point to the 10 every time to justify their employees' salary and their own ability of a manager to get more out of them. Then the 6hr worker is asked to stay later for "team morale," which often amounts to little more than twiddling thumbs and waiting out the clock, with hopefully some of that time spent wondering why they're even there in the first place.

Sorry :) ... I do wonder if I could actually work 6hr/day whether I would spend them working harder. One can dream...

Also, fuck people asking you to stay for "team morale". If you left earlier, I'd think "If I worked harder, maybe they would let me leave earlier, too..."

Unfortunately that isn't how this would play out long term. With a six hour work day, people would just work for 5 hours and goof off for the rest of the time. If we reduced to day further, we would see a corresponding, proportional decrease in the ratio of productive to unproductive time.

Well, I don't believe that for a second and it sounds like you made it up.

I (and others) anecdotally lose steam part way through the day. The last couple hours are a waste. I see no reason why that would happen earlier if the day ended earlier.

Sorry I disagree. See I work in Paris. Where the populace regularly work 35-45 hours and then take month long holidays. My contract allows a minimum of 35 hours/week. Anything after that is voluntary. I normally work the typical 8x5 week. When I decide to do 7x5 I strip out all the extra bullshit and focus on getting out the office. No breaks, meetings, phone calls, etc. my colleagues in he US don't care and don't know. I've worked a full day just like them, but an hour less.

People often project their work aesthetic onto others. Americans live at work, joke, etc and put in longer hours because it is expected (this leads to more goofing off actually) where some other cultures just do work while at work and then go home. Don't assume everyone is the same.

> Who is paying for that? Tax payers of course!

I'm happy when "my" tax dollars are spent making my life better. Isn't that the whole point? (Obviously, this will work when everyone in the country has a 6 hour work week)

No. You may not agree, but I believe that I am better than the government at deciding how to spend my money to make myself happier. Government spending occasionally benefits from scale that I can't achieve on my own (parks, better roads, etc). However, this is not one of those cases.

Excellent! That's how democracy works. If you don't like how things are run, you can a) try to change them or b) find a venue more congruent with your personal beliefs.

It is not your money. It is the money that the government allows you to have. You live in a society, and you wouldn't have money without society. We have as much right over that money as you do.

Money is both a "unit of account" and "medium of exchange". You can certainly have both of those without government. In some societies, people used seashells, salt, gold coins, or many other things as money. Bitcoin certainly counts as a "non-government money".

Since money is used as a medium of exchange, it's essentially a placeholder for your labor (when you receive it from your employer/customers as payment) or value provided to others. It is arguable whether society has as much right over an individual's labor as he/she does, I think they don't (while society may have a contribution, it might be significantly below 50%).

One last and minor thing we'll have to disagree on: I don't think government equals society. An individual can be a part of society without being part of government, and I also believe government sometimes represents its own interests at the expense of society.

OK let's clarify some basics. You cannot have either unit of account of medium of exchange without a government. Tell me one time in history that has happened. The government is fundamental to any economic system at all.

I know that in an abstract imaginary world you may think something else but that's all it is: imaginary. In the real world, no society = no money = no economics = no government.

Anything that is valuable, fungible and divisible could be used as money (you could even use barrels of oil). For examples, see [1]. Again, a great contemporary example is Bitcoin (not sure why you're ignoring that, it's a great example of money that exists in spite of government, not because of it).

Perhaps what you're referring to is legal tender, which indeed requires a government to exist. However, not all money is legal tender (for example, euros are not legal tender in the US, afaik).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money

Bitcoin exists in a system that is supported by the state. Money requires the state. You're thinking in very limited terms. Think broadly: in a society which does not have security guaranteed by the state, there will be no economic systems.

Historically, states and credit-based money came first. THEN came the unit of account and medium of exchange money that you are talking about.

Going back to the original point, can you go to a deserted island and make "money"? No. You need society. You need government. You need an economic system. The money is only partially "yours".

> Historically, states and credit-based money came first. THEN came the unit of account and medium of exchange money that you are talking about.

Actually, the Wikipedia page on "fiat money" (if that's what you're referring to) says: "Fiat money originated in 11th century China" [1]. There were many commodity currencies before that.

> Going back to the original point, can you go to a deserted island and make "money"? No. You need society. You need government. You need an economic system. The money is only partially "yours".

That's if there is only one person on that island. If more people live on the island, they might start trading services and use some some improvised currency, e.g., coconuts or seashells. In this case, you have a society and money, but not necessarily a government.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money#History

> Actually, the Wikipedia page on "fiat money" (if that's what you're referring to) says: "Fiat money originated in 11th century China" [1].

I'm referring to ledgers of credit. They originated in Mesopotamia, thousands of years ago. Check out the book "Debt" by David Graeber.

> That's if there is only one person on that island. If more people live on the island, they might start trading services and use some some improvised currency, e.g., coconuts or seashells. In this case, you have a society and money, but not necessarily a government.

See, that's completely untrue. What is actually going to happen is that multiple people on that society are going to bludgeon each other to death once there are enough people to constitute a society.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the government's purpose is not to "optimize mgraczyk's happiness".

Tax dollars spent to ensure everyone has a fairer work schedule are dollars well-spent.

We have far, far more productivity than would necessitate everyone putting in 40+ hours a week, it's just that that productivity is not well-spread around at all.

> Who is paying for that?

That's the best part - it's free! Due to increases in productivity (better technology), people can work less overall.

No it's not free, it's also been tested in fields that require human labor which can not be replaced or supplemented with automation e.g. hospice nursing. While productivity might have increased although I've tried to go back to the actual studies to verify it and i couldn't find anything to support it it's not free.

They are still being paid the same (per hour salary was increased) and they had to hire more staff, one of the big pluses they've reported is that it was much easier for them to recruit new employees but that's not something unique considering they've just given everyone a 25% raise by mandating that they should work only 6 hours.

So overall their operational expenses have went up, by how much well hard to say, they've managed to increase their workforce by almost 30% so that's a flat out 30% increase in operational costs, since recruiting and maintaining an employee is considerably more expensive (on boarding process & training costs, more heads means more benefits have to be paid out) than paying overtime then the operational costs have probably even risen more than a flat 30%. This is a government funded experiment and so it the employer so who ended up paying the bill well the Swedish people, at least those who pay into the system since now Sweden has the lowest (actual) pay-in ratio of all countries within the EAA and no much north sea oil and gas to cover for it like their richer neighbor Norway.

What I am saying is that it is free for the society as a whole; redistribution within the society may still occur.

Let's take a simple example. You have a village and someone plants an apple tree. Everybody who wants an apple has to pay to the owner (planter). Now let's say (to make it less politically controversial) that the owner dies, and the village decides that anyone in the village can take, say, 10 apples per month.

I would then say the apples are free, wouldn't you? It perfectly fits the definition of the word.

And this is analogous to technological innovation. Someone spent time creating this innovation in the past, and the products of this innovation can be free, you don't have to pay anyone to use it, they are already dead.

So I have shown you, I hope, that free things can appear "out of thin air" in the economy. Then it's just a matter of social consensus how to redistribute the free things, for example, people can decide that they will just work two hours less.

I don't think you understand how economics work. If I take your scenario it's then well sure it works if the people take some apples and keep the others to sell in order to pay to keep that tree, and save money for the next one. Which is exactly the deal that was before, that farmer had to take care of that tree, that land, and those apples so he can sell them to the people, the cost of the apples represented that cost.

But in this case what happens is that then the population doubles and they decide that now each person can take 15 apples, not only now they have had a 300% increase in apple consumption which puts a stress on the tree, and the left over apples that were used to be sold in order to pay the gardener to take care of the tree are also now gone so your free tree dies and rots away and everyone is sad because there are no more apples.

No matter what economical model you choose there is no such thing as "free" you have a society which can produce X amount of capital that's the pie you have to play with. Over unity doesn't exists in economics anymore that it can exist in nature.

P.S. Even money isn't free to maintain, so even if i drop a bag of money into your lap it will cost you.

> I don't think you understand how economics work.

And I think your view is too narrow.

> the cost of the apples represented that cost

No, the cost of apples represented how much people wanted them. It had nothing to do with the cost of the tree maintenance. There is no requirement for the person to even maintain the tree - some food actually grows on trees. :-)

When the population doubles the village may decide differently. Your scenario is just one possible option, and that's my point.

> No matter what economical model you choose there is no such thing as "free"

That's not correct. This problem was dealt with very differently in different economic schools. Classicals for example had concept of land and rent (extraction). For them, it could have been "free", or rather, they understood that there is an arrangement in society. Neoclassicals, neokeynesians and austrians pretty much ignore this problem. Marx invented labor theory of value (all value comes from labor) to deal with it, which was quite a good attempt to find a generally acceptable solution (and you even allude to it where you try to claim that maintenance by humans is always required), but is unfortunately inconsistent.

I think the simplest resolution is to simply accept that things (and even ideas) can produce value on their own, without human intervention. This value can then be captured easily by humans, because these things don't protest like humans do. And this capture is not all that different from landowner capturing rent. It's just a matter of laws and customs how the windfalls from capture of the (free) value produced by things is distributed.

You may argue then how any profit should be distributed? Well, I have no idea, and I don't think anyone has, really. Even if you have just two people (say two different specializations) that are both required to produce certain thing, how do you divide profits from the thing? There is no correct answer to that question.

Capitalist's answer is to make one of them owner who decides for both, communist's answer is to divide them equally, democrat's answer is them to take vote, answer from labor theory is inconsistent and paradoxical (if you consider technical innovation in one job, one of them now works less but gets paid as before, which contradicts the assumption that value comes from labor), answer from free market theory is even weirder - that there is no profit to be divided, and answer from practice seems to be that it simply depends on political power of the parties (which may simply translate to bigger stick if you have just two people).

> Even money isn't free to maintain, so even if i drop a bag of money into your lap it will cost you.

This is arguably a different meaning of "free". On level of physics, nothing is really "free", because there is energy and entropy.. But in everyday use of the word "free" we are dealing with values relevant for humans, and they don't entirely map to these physics terms (in fact they often contradict, for example in GDP calculation).

Nitpick: that's not a 25% raise, it's 33%. Example:

  $80 / 8 hours = $10/hour
  $80 / 6 hours = $13.33/hour

The latter is 33% more than the former.

It can only be free if you neglect opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of an hour unworked rises as productivity rises.

I am not sure I entirely accept the concept of "opportunity cost". It certainly has problems, it depends on how free you really are, as has been nicely shown in one of my favorite videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4

In any case, I think this was mostly resolved in modern society, with concept of overtime pay. (I assume, when talking about 6-hour work day, we are implicitly talking about employment.) No one is prevented working more, given that someone is willing to pay more (to the same person). And reason for this arrangement is precisely to give people the choice to cash on the free time or the extra value.

By switched to two six-hour shifts with full pay and no break for lunch you get more efficient use out of machines and buildings. Add that with increased productivity per employee, lowered costs to sickness and injury, higher personal retention, and the increased operation costs are directly paid by the increased production and decreased costs over time.

Are operating costs going up? While they have to hire more people, they don't have to replace people as often, and they don't have as many mistakes/errors, which can be expensive.

These people also pay taxes. Sure there probably still added tax burden but it isn't so black and white. It does a few things:

1) More jobs = more spending = more taxes in indirect ways (businesses) 2) Less stress on other public programs, such as welfare (if these people aren't employed, who is paying for their xyz?)

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