Should Friday be the New Saturday? (nber.org)
- Reference: 0176750387
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/0749239/should-friday-be-the-new-saturday
- Source link: https://www.nber.org/papers/w33577
> This paper investigates self-reported wedges between how much people work and how much they want to work, at their current wage. More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked -- actual hours exceed desired hours. We combine this evidence with a simple model of labor supply to assess the welfare consequences of tighter weekly hours limits via willingness-to-pay calculations. According to counterfactuals, the optimal length of the workweek in Germany is 37 hours. Introducing such a cap would raise welfare by .8-1.6% of GDP. The gains from a shortened workweek are largest for workers who are married, female, white collar, middle aged, and high income. An extended analysis integrates a non-constant wage-hours relationship, falling capital returns, and a shrinking tax base.
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w33577
I don't WANT to work at all (Score:1)
> More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked -- actual hours exceed desired hours.
That seems like a ridiculous way to define "overworked".
I don't WANT to work at all. I work for one reason only: I need money.
Does that mean I am "overworked" ??
Isn't requiring me to work to get money for things I need, food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, etc. just exploitation?
Re: I don't WANT to work at all (Score:2)
It absolutely is, but the prevailing economic system knows no other way to produce and distribute wealth (including the absolute basics you mention) without exploiting the vast majority of the populace for the profit of workplace owners who pay them less than what their work is worth.
Re: (Score:3)
That's not how they define it. Here is how the question is posed in the paper:
> “If you could choose your own working hours, taking into account that your income would change
> according to the number of hours: How many hours would you want to work?”
Re: (Score:2)
> That seems like a ridiculous way to define "overworked".
That's not how they defined it. That's how *you* defined it after reading a summary about a news article about a study which you never actually looked it.
> Does that mean I am "overworked" ??
No. If anything it means you're unmotivated and slack, content in ignorance and producing low-quality and quick assessments from a lack of information.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
> We should have a 4-day workweek. Nobody really works on Fridays anyway, so you may as well not feel guilty about it.
Speak for yourself. I use friday to accomplish all the action items that I procrastinated on the other four days in the week!
Re: (Score:2)
> Nobody really works on Fridays anyway, so you may as well not feel guilty about it.
As someone who appreciates still having a hybrid work schedule, this fact you highlighted is my biggest reason I fear losing that privilege. Most people at my office are just as easy to reach on Monday as they are from Tue-Thu, when most people are in the office. But on Friday if you don't have a meeting scheduled with someone it can be very hard to get ahold of them. On Friday my wife routinely asks me when my last meeting is over because of an expectation that I can stop working at that time.
It's not like
Thursdays as the new Fridays (Score:4, Funny)
I'm mostly fine with this, except making Thursdays the last day of the work week would make them even more complicated, and I, for one, have never been able to quite get the hang of Thursdays. ;)
It will be eventually (Score:2)
As automation continues to become more advanced, the only way we can continue to have an economy where most people obtain their income primarily through labor is to reduce the amount of labor each worker does. Options such as a 6-hour work-day and 4-hour work-week (or some combination of both) are inevitable. I would be surprised if the hours in the average work week hasn't dropped by at least 20% in the next 20 years.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not at all inevitable. US worker productivity has doubled since WW2 (the 40 hour work week was established in the 30's for reference) and we're still working the same old hours, meanwhile the middle class continues to shrink as it has since the 70's. We're already WELL overdo in benefitting from increased worker productivity.
Getting to 4 days a week will be at least as much of a struggle as getting to 5 was and is not at all inevitable.
Re: It will be eventually (Score:2)
It's inevitable that they should make sense, but it's not inevitable that they will happen.
If what appears to be planned plays out, the workers will have to work MORE and everyone else will be either left to die in a ditch, imprisoned and enslaved, deported to someplace where they will probably die, or just outright murdered by the state.
SFSMTWT (Score:2)
SFSMTWT from now on.
It already is for me. (Score:2)
I have worked 4 10s for the past few years and I love it. Not sure I could work any other schedule now. Fortunately I'm in my 60s so this gig will probably be my final.
IT maintenance (Score:2)
It would allow IT, for once, to do maintenance during the week. I would like to do updates on Fridays and reclaim weekends. Must be nice to have a job that only lasts 40 hours per week or only happens on certain days.
Yes!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am retired now, but for the last year of my working life, I cut back to 4 days per week at 80% of my salary. It made a tremendously positive difference to my quality of life. I recommend it to everyone if you can make it work financially.
I'm not sure how or why we settled on the magic number of 5 days per week. There doesn't seem to be any particularly compelling reason for it.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm not sure how or why we settled on the magic number of 5 days per week. There doesn't seem to be any particularly compelling reason for it.
Actually, at least in Germany, the legal limit is 48 hours/week on 6 days. But you could simply work 40h/week on 4 days.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it was largely that at one time we had 6 days a week (thanks religion!), and unions fought to give us an additional day and kinda gave up after that.
But four days seems to work for everyone according to the research. So, of course, does WFH, but the bosses are busy burning that one down, so I wouldn't put any faith in us going for four days just because it makes sense and businesses as well as employees would benefit from it.
Re: (Score:1)
Well study your history a little more. It was largely that we had to work 7 days a week, and as many hours as your master/lord demanded or else. Abrahamic religion came along and gave you a day of rest.
Whatever you think Abrahamic faiths in general at least give credit where credit is due, and that is for much of the Middle East and the West, they are pretty much the root source of the very concept that anyone who isn't some variation on nobility, chief, priest, or ranking bureaucrat; should be working le
Re: (Score:2)
> Well study your history a little more. It was largely that we had to work 7 days a week, and as many hours as your master/lord demanded or else. Abrahamic religion came along and gave you a day of rest.
You need to study your history a little more. Before industrialization the average European peasant worked around 1400-1500 hours per year. It was common for them to work 10-12 hour days 6-7 days per week during the busy seasons, but they also only worked about 120 days per year. In the pre-industrialized world most people worked very little by today's standards (well, by US standards anyway).
A small factor in why industrialized laborers were able to successfully push back against draconian labor policies i
Re: Yes!!! (Score:2)
Abrahamic religion came along and gave you a day to spend in Church, and demanded that if you had any money, you give it some.
Re: (Score:1)
They settled on 5 days a week because they thought that life would be nicer that way instead of 6 days a week. 6 days a week was decided on because even god had to rest on the 7th day.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm not sure how or why we settled on the magic number of 5 days per week. There doesn't seem to be any particularly compelling reason for it.
Most research I remember reading (and could find in a quick Google search) shows worker productivity goes up fairly linearly until you reach 45-55 hours per week. So there was a compelling reason for governments to limit the work-week to 40 hours, but not continue to drop below that. Even countries that work far less than the US tend to do this with more vacation time, not with a shorter work-week.
If we drop to a 25-35 hour work-week it probably won't be for the same reasons we moved to a 40-hour week a cen