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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the 15-hour-work-week dept.

In 1930, a year into the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write about the economic possibilities of his grandchildren. Despite widespread gloom as the global economic order fell to its knees, the British economist remained upbeat, saying that the ‘prevailing world depression … blind[s] us to what is going on under the surface’. In his essay, he predicted that in 100 years’ time, ie 2030, society would have advanced so far that we would barely need to work. The main problem confronting countries such as Britain and the United States would be boredom, and people might need to ration out work in ‘three-hour shifts or a 15-hour week [to] put off the problem’. At first glance, Keynes seems to have done a woeful job of predicting the future. In 1930, the average worker in the US, the UK, Australia and Japan spent 45 to 48 hours at work. Today, that is still up around 38 hours.

Keynes has a legendary stature as one of the fathers of modern economics – responsible for much of how we think about monetary and fiscal policy. He is also famous for his quip at economists who deal only in long-term predictions: ‘In the long run, we are all dead.’ And his 15-hour working week prediction might have been more on the mark than it first appears.

If we wanted to produce as much as Keynes’s countrymen did in the 1930s, we wouldn’t need everyone to work even 15 hours per week. If you adjust for increases in labour productivity, it could be done in seven or eight hours, 10 in Japan (see graph below). These increases in productivity come from a century of automation and technological advances: allowing us to produce more stuff with less labour. In this sense, modern developed countries have way overshot Keynes prediction – we need to work only half the hours he predicted to match his lifestyle.

The progress over the past 90 years is not only apparent when considering workplace efficiency, but also when taking into account how much leisure time we enjoy. First consider retirement: a deal with yourself to work hard while you’re young and enjoy leisure time when you’re older. In 1930, most people never reached retirement age, simply labouring until they died. Today, people live well past retirement, living a third of their life work-free. If you take the work we do while we’re young and spread it across a total adult lifetime, it works out to less than 25 hours per week. There’s a second factor that boosts the amount of leisure time we enjoy: a reduction in housework. The ubiquity of washing machines, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens means that the average US household does almost 30 hours less housework per week than in the 1930s. This 30 hours isn’t all converted into pure leisure. Indeed, some of it has been converted into regular work, as more women – who shoulder the major share of unpaid domestic labour – have moved into the paid labour force. The important thing is that, thanks to progress in productivity and efficiency, we all have more control over how we spend our time.

So if today’s advanced economies have reached (or even exceeded) the point of productivity that Keynes predicted, why are 30- to 40-hour weeks still standard in the workplace? And why doesn’t it feel like much has changed? This is a question about both human nature – our ever-increasing expectations of a good life – as well as how work is structured across societies.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:14PM (6 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:14PM (#913338)

    the average worker

    If you only count working people, then, sure.

    If you also count all the people - even just the able bodied and minded of working age, it would seem that our present average work week is down below 20 hours a week, and continuing to fall.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Tuesday October 29 2019, @08:11PM (1 child)

    by Nuke (3162) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @08:11PM (#913404)

    Right. What I see (in the UK) is some people working their guts out, 60+ hours a week, while others (able bodied) doing nothing. There is an agricultural worker near me who is cutting hedges with lights on his tractor until 10 pm (makes you wonder what he lives for), yet in town and there are guys just standing around in the street holding cans of beer.

    Employers like to avoid the fixed costs per worker by having fewer workers doing longer hours.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 29 2019, @09:24PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @09:24PM (#913437)

      Employers like to avoid the fixed costs per worker by having fewer workers doing longer hours.

      Business, liability, etc. being what it is, it's probably cheaper for businesses to pay the social taxes to support the louts standing on the corner swilling beer and just grind a few people to death for paychecks with less exposure to the responsibility / potential liability of additional employees.

      Yet another clear sign: the status quo is broken.

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  • (Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:10AM (3 children)

    by legont (4179) on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:10AM (#913535)

    You probably forgot to count women who used to stay home, but are working now.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:26AM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:26AM (#913553)

      Not if you consider the unpaid domestic labor those women used to do.

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      • (Score: 2) by legont on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:55AM (1 child)

        by legont (4179) on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:55AM (#914004)

        Be honest and admit it - you did not count for this when you put your original comment out. Besides, the numbers do not agree.

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        "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:53PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:53PM (#914090)

          Be honest and admit it - you did not count for this when you put your original comment out

          Actually, I did. And I'm not interested in the politically charged "unemployment" figures. I tend more to believe these statistics:

          Current U.S. population: ~328 million

          Current U.S. workforce: ~160 million

          Now, my wife is not counted in that 160 million, but she easily works ~25 hours a week in childcare and domestic labor. I may be counted as ~40 hours a week, but that is not counting home and vehicle maintenance plus domestic labor I do to the tune of ~10 hours a week.

          Go back to my great grandparents, and the workforce statistics weren't there, but the agrarian labor just to keep food on the table was quite a bit more than 20 hours per week per person, starting at a young age and going until they were physically unable.

          If you go into the Carolina mountains today, instead of farmers you find entire communities that are economically based on disability and social security benefits.

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