Could a four-day working week become the norm?
economist.com
economist.com
I'm thinking of stuff like nurses, bus drivers, shop clerks, probably a chunk of people in hospitality industries (restaurants/hotels/theme parks etc). Probably also some/many roles in manufacturing industries.
It seems obvious that a lot of "HN jobs" probably could have the same output while working less.
But for almost all non-office jobs, we would still need someone to drive the bus, or take care of people in hospitals etc. Wouldn't a switch to four-day working week just mean a 25% pay increase for those employees?
Would that be a bad thing?
As we've discovered over the past year, a lot of those people play a crucial role in society today - why do they get paid so little for that?
What follows isn't necessarily right, but I believe It's why they're paid little.
Because they're all easily replaceable, companies doesn't have to invest more than maybe a week of salary into replacing them if they ask for higher pay. At my company we're having a hard time finding people, so sometimes even questionable talent gets hired and trained because we need people. But in low-skill work people will always be paid what is regulated. If we increase their salary enough, then I wouldn't want my job, even though I enjoy what I do, because of the mental burden of never having my head to myself.
The best job I've ever had was when backpacking Australia, was taking care of gardens, hedges and stairwells. It paid shit, but every day I felt gratification because I worked with my body and actually finished something (even though It had to be done again in a week or 2 since things grow like crazy in Brisbane).
What I do now is an endless struggle of never being finished, so my brain keeps computing solutions to these problems even once I'm off the clock, so if a bus driver all of a sudden has my salary, why on earth would I want a job that requires more of me. As in, I'm not just the current meatbag at this place.
I bet we could even stretch this into that it would reduce output of society greatly, since people that otherwise would pursue "high skill" work (Idk, somehow i feel like anyone could be taught my job in a week, but this is more Imposter Syndrome than anything i guess) could be just as happy or happier doing something that doesn't increase human efficency.
I will argue for this "to death" (since It's really one of my core beliefs), but i would also love someone to be able to change my mind as it could potentially increase my mental well-being. I'm sadly looking "down" on "simple work", I think as a means to justify wtf I'm doing.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It also means, that given a good trade-off, you would do something else.
But a lot of people care less about money, and more about other things in life: work-life balance, mental health, closeness to family, whatever.
Given that working is a must, why wouldn't we try to make it suck less for everybody? At the end of the day, life is complicated enough without having other people trying to make it harder for you.
It sounds like you want the other to be paid less, since you are having a hard time. The solution IMO is not paying other people less, it is finding a better place for yourself!
> I bet we could even stretch this into that it would reduce output of society greatly, since people that otherwise would pursue "high skill" work
As you can imagine, I disagree - I like my job (not position! I like it as well, but I could change it), and I wouldn't do any other job for the same amount of money. I like not being dead tired at the end of the day, I like being challenged, I like being able to deliver something to millions of people.
Unwanted suggestion: focus less on other people, and a bit more on your own well-being.
Edit: I have also to disclose, I wouldn't mind a 20% tax increase if this means bus drivers and nurses are paid more: we don't do anything special, I really don't understand why we should be paid 3x what other people are making. I understand the _mechanism_ behind it, but at the end of the week my SO does much more work than me, and she's paid 1/3.
I do like the challenge, It's just a bit much. I'll be honest, I haven't been at many other places (26 years of age) so this might be 100% true and I just didn't know it until now.
If I'm also entirely honest, if I were given the option to never "work" a single day of my life again I would take it any time. Would pick up opensource development of whatever I find interesting again as I did a bit when i was younger.
> Unwanted suggestion: focus less on other people, and a bit more on your own well-being.
My previous comment might've been interpreted as if I would actively argue against a suck-less change for others in my country, I would not. On HN I like to express what I otherwise wouldn't since I get thought-out replies like your own to challenge my own beliefs (If i were to do the same in a Facebook discussion/Reddit the pie throwing contest would start)
That's not to say you don't have a point though.
> I have also to disclose, I wouldn't mind a 20% tax increase if this means bus drivers and nurses are paid more: we don't do anything special, I really don't understand why we should be paid 3x what other people are making. I understand the _mechanism_ behind it, but at the end of the week my SO does much more work than me, and she's paid 1/3.
I don't make nearly enough to be comfortable losing 20% of my salary, not as in that it'd make be poor, but it would put me closer to the average.
Should mention, I manage a small datacenter (I don't own it) in Sweden, Swedens IT job salaries aren't as "inflated" as the US ones.
Thanks for your reply :)
One of the biggest reasons that I would like to be wealthy is so that if I or someone I love gets sick, I can avoid going bankrupt to get treatment or forego treatment because I can't afford it.
That's a fairly realistic concern for large swaths of the US population.
It's very immoral to allow (force) people to die, when they otherwise could live if they have more money.
It's less egregious, but still immoral to allow (force) people to live in pain.
I think it is a much more complicated issue to balance medical "expertise" with patient desires. If your grandmother wants a treatment and her healthcare providers believe she should not have it, not because it affects their profits, but because it's medically ill-advised, then what?
Another comparison would be of the president of the US and a coal miner. The coal miner might use more physical energy, but the effects of the work that the president is performing is so much larger it is ridiculous.
But, just because I am lucky enough to work in a field where my work could potentially impact the entire world, it doesn't mean I deserve to be paid 3x the others.
The amount of energy, passion, and dedication can be the same if you are a kindergarten teacher, a nurse, or a web developer.
Me too :-) This is why I included "Given that working is a must", otherwise I would pick up something else to do (and slack a lot).
> I don't make nearly enough to be comfortable losing 20% of my salary, not as in that it'd make be poor, but it would put me closer to the average.
It would definitely do the same for me: I am in Germany, so kind of similar situation (however, AFAIU from Swedish friends, here IT is a bit better paid, and taxes are a bit lower).
Don't get me wrong: I definitely enjoy having money and being able to travel and have a nice life, I would also like having childhood friends being able to enjoy a good life as well - the only difference between me and them is that I "understand" IT, while they are better at other things.
I think all this rambling goes down to: "life is unfair, let's try to make it easier for everyone, without focusing much on the output of what you are doing, and more on the person you are".
It may seem strange to think of a nurse or driver being more useful when contributing 30 hours a week instead of 40, but that’s because we don’t appreciate the potential range of their decision making quality, error rate, and so on.
In the long run, too, any job we don’t want to see become higher paid and more effective, we will want to see be eliminated or automated. So the effective pay increase would not uniformly drag on GDP across many industries.
“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.
He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert Heinlein
Improved decision making quality or not, wards with a nurse on call still need 20% more nurses. And there's absolutely no way a driver is delivering 20% more stuff in four 8 hour days to make up for being absent for the fifth. And most of the "place needs a person to be on call for this shift" type jobs are the hardest to automate
In addition to automation for jobs where attention and reason doesn’t contribute to success (which is how you’re describing nursing and driving; I of course disagree), there will still be a market for hourly pay and people who really enjoy and are suited to overtime, as well as other factors. The transition is complex.
No, those are the same industries and jobs in which people are paid by the hour. And even if they weren't, it's naive to assume that employers wouldn't adjust compensation down when hours go down by 20%.
Personally, I'd rather work 5 days a week than work 4 and get my pay decreased.
BUT while I think that the 4-day week would be awesome, more days to rest, more consumption and other stuff. This measure, by itself would have a minimal impact. Needs to be in conjunction with others, like Universal income, taxes to the corporations and wealthy.
We are in a world where AI is here to stay and it will only get better. Self-driving cars, Store free-clerks, hell AI can now co-write code. A lot of jobs will be reduced within a few short years, and I think that we are not prepared to absorb all that people and inequalities are going to explode all around the world.
It's actually a good tactic you can use to negotiate working less hours: "You will get my best hours". Working 36 or 40 hours a week doesn't make much of a difference in terms of productivity, but the former can get you an extra afternoon off once a week (or a day if you save it up) if you keep working 9-5.
There are also jobs where the output is open ended: you can work more on those powerpoint slides, or you can declare victory early and it will still look like a slide deck that's finished.
In that sense there's not really an "amount of days worked" and with WFH this gets even more blurred as you don't even need to go anywhere.
There is a sense in which this is detrimental for such workers to go to 4 days. Employers will pressure people to get paid 20% less, for effectively the same work. This is especially the case with women who feel a lot of pressure to be with their kids. The employer takes the other side of the above deal and feels entitled to the same work (which is nebulous). This has effects on both pay and career advancement, and stress. My wife got offered one of these "deals" and rejected it, mainly because her boss seemed like an exploiter.
ok, and while I do like to do that, it is a really poor substitute for being able to do whatever I like.
Some on-call is basically getting paid for doing one thing a month. Others are reliably going to require work.
Some "whatever I like" is being at home idling, others are "cave diving in another country".
In the middle there's plenty of space for compromise, because you can find a happy medium where both are satisfied.
Very little prep was needed, everyone (including clients) could accommodate rescheduling meetings and deadlines earlier or later by 1 day.
I think 3 day weekends do cause a problem, it can be too long to wait for something, especially if it comes up the morning of the first day. However, we are accustomed to 2 days over a weekend, and 1 day is no big deal. While it is nice getting away for 3 days, the first day back is never very productive. Part of the day is just getting up my mind back into what I was working on and catching up on what I missed.
Working 2 days feels like a super short week so it forced me to focus to make them productive, but it also tempered my habit of taking on too much. Wednesday completely feels like a Saturday, but businesses are open (well some of them with COVID). Thursday morning was a disappointment, in my mind it was Sunday. The disappointment is short though, I only had 2 more days until the weekend!
I never would have tried this, but my employer gives us a day off for our birthday that I normally use on a Monday or Friday to make into a long weekend. Due to COVID, I took it on the Wednesday it actually landed on. I would have never thought to try this otherwise. Give it a shot sometime.
Personally I'd take the 3 day weekend everytime. Shops are also open on Fridays so that point is kinda moot. And the fact that people have to wait for me is not really my problem. They also have to wait 5 weeks for me when I'm on holiday; it's the organisations' responsibility to make it work not mine.
But if we all go to work 4 days, it might be beneficial to have 50% take Wednesday and 50% take Fridays.
Personally, however, I still very much prefer Friday. Honestly, the extra day is not that big a deal — sure, it's three days away, but on two of those, everybody is away, and for the rest it's pretty much the least productive one anyway.
I also found that Monday is actually super productive for me, mostly because after being away for three days, I'm usually actually looking forward to work again. Your mileage may vary with how much you enjoy your work though, I guess.
That said, I don't mind too much answering the odd email on Fridays every now and then if something urgent and predictable does come along. The main benefit to me lies the mental state of not needing to work, and spending just half of my week working, which brings me a lot of peace of mind.
But when I've spoken to American colleagues, they seem quite happy to admit how little they've worked, and how they've spent a few hours of their work day just hanging out and chatting. It seems to be their normal day.
If you were looking at it from a productivity perspective I suspect five shorter days is going to be more effective than four normal days.
> For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
Get back to work, slackers!
You (the person reading this) are also doing it if you work in e.g. software development during the day, then volunteer in e.g. open source at night / weekends.
China is state capitalist, not communist, despite having a "Communist Party". It's governing ideology is Dengism, which replaced Maoism (which itself in practice was state capitalist just like Leninism was in the USSR) and defines "special economic zones" which are explicitly capitalist and are ideologically justified as being temporary, promising that the capitalists they create will be disowned by the people when the time has come (whenever that is).
Ending capitalism not only means "getting rid of" the capitalists (which state capitalism does by substituting them with the state) but getting rid of the capitalist mode of production, i.e. the employer-employee or capitalist-worker dichotomy. The easiest way to understand this when coming from a capitalist realist mindset (which is probably most people on HN) is in the form of worker cooperatives, where workers either decide how the business is run democratically or delegate decisions to a representative (and being able to revoke this delegation at any moment if their interests are not reflected properly). There's no single "owner" external to the "workers", the workers control the company.
State capitalism was intended as a "transitional state" to enable a communist revolution. The USSR justified it by stating that a communist revolution would require a level of industrial development Tsarist Russia didn't have (being a primarily agrarian society) and then claiming that a communist revolution would have to be global in order to succeed (which is a great justification for imperialist expansions and authoritarian rule to "maintain order" until then). Some people would say that if you contrast Lenin's writings with the politics he supported directly following the Soviet revolution, he was more of an opportunist seeking political power than an actual ideologue.
Mao was similarly focused on "creating the conditions" to enable communism at some point in the future rather than actually promoting radical democracy and equality directly, although his death count was mostly the result of authoritarian bureaucracy going wrong and naïve optimism about foreign technological accomplishments, which arguably was a problem he inherited rather than created.
That said, I don't think revolutions work, certainly not at scale and not if you want to create a more egalitarian society rather than another autocracy. The dynamics of revolutions require a small group exerting power on a larger system, which is in itself antithetical to the idea of how a communist society would be structured (hint: basically the opposite way). A lot of socialist revolutions during the Cold War were derailed by either side trying to turn them into a proxy war resulting either in violent defeat or a red authoritarian client state of either the USSR or China.
It's probably a better strategy to strengthen communal bonds by creating parallel local structures that can take over when capitalism fails. Worker cooperatives would help with this as they tend to contribute to local communities rather than merely exploit them as resources. (Small) unions can also be an important tool as they can force capitalist corporations to act more like cooperatives by enabling collective bargaining against the owners.
Oh, sorry for the lengthy response. You were probably intending this as an absurdist quip, not a genuine suggestion.
But in other news water is wet. Chinese government is completely inhumane with little regard to labor laws. etc etc
Given this is the government we're talking about - it isn't really that surprising, is it? They could have reduced the workforce by 20% and accomplished a similar result, while reducing costs.
I currently work as part of an internationally distributed team, meaning from Tel Aviv to SF and just about every timezone in between, and while there was some minor anxiety in the early days about managing the different timezones, what has actually happened is that all the stress of on-call and related time crunches has evaporated. There is always someone online—at what is a normal time in their day, importantly—to deal with bugs, to help with work that's running long, etc. If one of my teammates is nearing the end of their day and they're stuck on a problem and mentally exhausted, they don't need to push late into the night. They can simply give me context and hand off to me, since it's my AM.
I think the benefits of these naturally staggered schedules are going to catch on and spread. It's easy to imagine companies with shortened work weeks, but with teams on different schedules.
4 day week, at a salary 20% under the market rate. My spare day is spent on doing a part-time masters, or personal projects in-between modules.
Previously, I was a freelancer for 7 years, and would take 3 months off over summer every year to work on personal projects.
I'm lucky that I don't have one of those jobs that requires constant presence, or being on-call, etc. (I build SaaS/backend systems)
A little joke for all of you whose bosses won't let you live your best life:
My boss arrived at work in a brand-new Lamborghini. I said, "Wow, that's an amazing car!" He replied, "If you work hard, put all your hours in, and strive for excellence, I'll get another one next year".
Now I'm kinda unemployed, kinda working freelance. After a few months of frustration trying to work from home I rented myself a spot in a coworking space where I can work freelance and on my own side projects.
The fact that I'm paying for this spot and that I purposely positioned myself so other people can see my screen are great motivators. Never been more productive. Some days I don't work at all, other days I work 15hrs.
I guess what I'm trying to say is - don't ever hesitate to drop the normal schedule for something that works out better.
In the end I even started to do some work on Sunday afternoons so the switch wouldn't be so abrupt. So instead of working a full working week I was now working 4 days paid and half a day unpaid, which doesn't make much sense of course.
That's debatable. GDP is rising (slowly) but debt is rising faster, this isn't generally good.
But anacodically, when I as a business owner have gone through the tremendous transaction costs of finding good employees, then its much better for me to employ 3 of them at 40h/week, then 4 of them at 30h/week.
Right now workers are a mi oruty in our democracies. This is why for the last 40 years they've gotten fewer and fewer rights. We've seen big rises in incomes taxes, cuts to services workers use (everything from education to infrastructure) and unions driven out of most markets. Life will continue to get harder for workers because they lack political power.
4 day weeks will work very well for a minority of jobs. In every other case, it is downright impractical to implement.
How can a Construction Worker / Waiter / Hotel management staff, etc have 4 day weeks ?
It's a thought bubble though: in my country doctors and nurses are severely overworked as it is. The health system could not permit 4 days a week for doctors and nurses.
- 2018: 0.06%
- 2019: 0.4%
- 2020: 0.7%
Mainstream normalisation is just around the corner imo.
I'm currently building https://4dayweek.io (Software jobs with a better work / life balance) to try and help with this :)
So what if it reduces output a little? We have had so much economic growth that we can afford this anyway, I think. Seems like a good use of increased productivity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
He started by taking the second half of each Friday off, because it was easy to sell his superiors on it.
During the next performance review he asked to have the whole Friday off, and was granted permission to do so.
A while after that he moved his day off to Monday.
https://remotehunt.com/remote-jobs-with-4-day-work-weeks
So it's probably better to negotiate your current job.
My predictions:
- 4 day work week, 20% reduction in pay, hence the need to take up a second and even a third gig job,
- The Internet is happy (we did it, 4 day work week, what is reality?),
- Many well-paid people are happy,
- The lowest paid are even more unhappy (2-3 extra jobs, more commute time, less free time, tax confusion),
- The government likes the employment stats that hide reality,
- Automation is phased in somewhat gentler than it would be if people just lost their jobs completely.
As an employer and company owner my bias is showing but this is not where I would want to go.
Stuff like this in me excel and ms project would need to be updated
=NETWORKDAYS() =WORKDAY()
But surely you don't actually believe that the burden of having to update some configurations has any place in an argument in defense of the status quo. Right?
I guess the nuance I was trying to convey here is that it would be incredibly disruptive to the current rituals of working. Starting at the high level 20% less production, less salary, then to the annoying concepts like calendaring meetings and travel. Then to the myopic things like stupid excel formulas.
But to your point, would I let an excel formula stop a cultural change.. obviously no and thanks for nudging me to clarify that. Change is good, healthy and expected. Questioning the status quo is always needed.
I just don’t like this one, I think it’s politically motivated to further get people to be more dependent on the biz institutions/gov and further contributes to a looming debt crisis. It’s like voting for class president because they will put in a soda fountain and free candy.
I think this plays out incredibly different for different classes of workers and occupations. And for those that need the hours I don’t see how this ends well. At the time based consulting level, this also includes me.
Lastly it’s odd to me for so many people that we want to work less but expect to consume the same or more. We expect stores to be open 7 days a week with longer hours of availability, we expect same day shipping on unlimited products yet we don’t want to work 5 days. I just have a tough time seeing how all boats rise. Part of this seems to also be that some people can afford to work just 4 days but need society to say “it’s okay” for them to do it. Aka 4 day work weeks aren’t just for the 1%.
Am I game for trying it? Sure, if it pushes humanity forward in our collective and individual endeavors, let’s give it a go.
I think it feels clear to many people that our consumption habits are unsustainable, regardless of how much we work. And I agree, "consumption" is where the rubber meets the road. Do we want to live in a place where we are simultaneously taking steps to mitigate climate change, reform labor, while also accepting that we must reduce air travel, next-day shipping, eating foods out of season, being able to get a bag of chips any time of the day, any day of the week, etc.?
In many cities of the world, it's not uncommon for e.g. the grocery store to be closed on Sunday. For sure, it's less convenient. But I think it's pretty reasonable to plan around it.
I'm interested to know 1. what you mean by "looming debt crisis", 2. who stands to gain from worsening the crises.
> It’s like voting for class president because they will put in a soda fountain and free candy.
I appreciate that you are using soda and candy as a metaphor for frivolous changes. On the other hand, I can also see it as a metaphor for "improving material conditions". People do care about how much time they have left outside of work and I think that that is appropriate and expected. That is a concrete, material aspect of life that people understand. National debt is not.
To add an additional nuance, I think promising a 4 day work week [and to hell with productivity] is crucially different from promising "clean coal" jobs [and to hell with the climate].
A four day work week has to be introduced alongside an increase in minimum wage.
Fortunately in many parts of the world we tie minimum wage to cost of living (barely, but even so, you genuinely can live on minimum wage).
Having shitty labour conditions is not a good argument against improving labour conditions.
Since many jobs can't produce the same output with less time this will actually creates more jobs in service industry, policing, healthcare etc... Which is perfect to offset many jobs lost due to automation.
Yes, those services would get more expensive (just like they are now compared to the times we worked 6 days a week) but that's just the price for 50% more free time for the rest of your working life.
My AI copilot autocorrected that to "I couldn't bother to look up actual statistics on this".
So did output drop on average, or did it not? And if it dropped then by how much in proportion to the number of hours reduced?
Too bad The Economist doesn't question that at all, the whole staying on the same pay deal depends on 11% productivity increase.