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Paid leave has been discussed in state legislatures and on the campaign trail during the past year. I am completely in favor of paid leave. As I have previously argued, it would allow more individuals, particularly those in lower-paying jobs, to take time off to deal with a major sickness or care for another family member, such as a newborn kid. But we should not stop at paid leave. We should also explore shortening the standard workweek. This phase would be gender neutral and would not discriminate against the many types of time challenges that adults confront. It may even assist in creating additional jobs.
The usual work week is 40 hours, or 8 hours each day, five days a week. It has been this way for a long time. In 1900, the average manufacturing worker worked 53 hours per week, which was more than a third more than we do now. The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, established a weekly maximum of 40 hours. Amazingly, more than three quarters of a century after the FLSA’s implementation, the regular work week has not decreased any further. Not only has the legal requirement not changed, but 40 hours has become the social and cultural norm.
What’s happening here? Economists expected that as we became wealthier, we would opt to work fewer hours. That has not happened. Instead, we have continued to labor at roughly the same rate as we did earlier in history but have invested all of the gains from productivity development in ever-increasing levels of consumption—larger houses, more electronic gadgets, nicer cars. With greater income, people acquire more and more items, but they don’t have time to appreciate it. A shorter conventional work week would improve quality of life, particularly for hourly workers who have reaped little benefit from economic expansion in recent decades.
Two-income couples might also gain. Between 1969 and 2000, the number of hours worked by couples aged 25 to 54 grew by 20%, from 56 to 67 hours (husband and wife combined). As Heather Boushey points out in her new book, Finding Time, we no longer live in a world where there is a “silent partner” in every business venture, the legendary “American Wife,” who looks after the children and the millions of details of everyday life. With a shortened work week, both men and women would have more time for everything from mowing the lawn to cooking dinner, with no assumptions about who does what. Although most of the discussion this year has focused on work-family balance, empty nesters and singles without young children may also benefit from a shortened work week. For them, it would be an opportunity to pursue their dreams of being an artist, a boat builder, or the owner of their own small business.
Shorter hours may also result in additional jobs for workers who would otherwise be left behind due to technological advancement. Many economists predict that when machines and artificial intelligence replace existing employment, new opportunities will emerge in technical, management, and service industries. But will this happen quickly or on a large enough scale to re-employ all of the people who are currently unemployed? I doubt it. A shorter work week may help to disperse available employment around. This method was utilized by Germany and other European countries, as well as a few states in the United States, during the Great Recession. It kept more people employed but worked fewer hours, lowering unemployment. Using a similar technique to deal with automation and long-term unemployment, while contentious, should not be discarded outright.
Of course, shorter hours can result in lower overall earnings. However, in a typical study published in the Monthly Labor Review, 28 percent of respondents said they would forego a day’s compensation for one fewer day of work per week. Any new initiative to cut the work week would need to be implemented gradually, with room for both companies and employees to make changes around the standard. However, if done right, the transition might be completed with little or no wage reductions, only lower raises, as a greater portion of any productivity boost was invested in increased free time. When Henry Ford lowered the work week from six to five days in 1926, he did not decrease salaries; he expected production and consumption to improve, and his example prompted other businesses to follow suit.
I am not talking about cutting hours for those of us who like to work long hours because we enjoy it. We would still be free to work around the clock, tethered to our technological devices and unsure of when work began and ended. A new hours standard would largely impact hourly (nonexempt) employees. These are the folks who work in less glamorous positions at the bottom of the career ladder, many of whom are single parents. Right now, people leave work exhausted, only to return home to a “second shift” that may be equally grueling. A shorter workweek would almost certainly improve the quality of life for these overworked Americans.
By all means, establish a paid leave policy; however, let us also discuss some even bigger ideas, ones that could lead to better work-life balance now and more job prospects in the future.
