An economy is meant to serve the people, not the people an economy. As Jeff Spross, in his article “The many benefits of a 4 day work week” lays out, most of us are working harder than ever, but not reaping the benefits that should follow—more pay, or more time off. Our pay’s stagnating; our bills keep going up; those of us not at the top suffer cycles of chronic stress and burnout; and some companies are beginning to realize they need to share the profits, one way or another (and it’s cheaper just to give people more time off).
Back in the 1930s, the economist John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that work weeks would eventually fall to 15 hours — or roughly two-day weeks — as technology advanced and economies became more productive. The logic for this is pretty simple: If a society increases the amount of wealth an hour of labor can produce, people can take the benefits of that in one of two ways: They can work more and take home more income, or they can take the same income home and work less.
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In fact, Cooper calculated that if we had reduced our hours worked as much as other countries that produce similar amounts of GDP per hour of labor, Americans would already have the equivalent of three Fridays off every month.
…That story about how people can take more income for the same hours, or the same income for fewer hours? It only works if the gains from productivity are shared equally. Rising inequality means they’re not. Thus, many working Americans aren't getting fewer hours or more income — they're working as hard as ever and their wages are stagnating.
A lot of people are working full 40-hour weeks — or much more, in a lot of instances — not because their company needs that labor time, but simply because they need to do so to bring home enough income to get by. Which implies their hours could be cut, but their pay maintained, without any loss to the bottom line — not to mention a decrease in stress and burnout.
And that's often what companies discover. Microsoft in Japan is not an isolated incident. A trust management firm in New Zealand recently made permanent a policy of 30-hour weeks — with pay equivalent to 37.5 hours — after it found significant increases in both worker productivity and reports of improved work-life balance. The Belgian nonprofit Femma is experimenting with a four-day work week this year, and the results will be followed by researchers at the University of Brussels. A Swedish city tried out six-hour work days recently, and found its officials nonetheless completed the same amount of work as before, if not more. Meanwhile, multiple research studies attest that working fewer hours can actually improve productivity and performance.