Can a Four-Day Workweek Succeed?

Economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long-run, we are all dead. He also predicted that his grandchildren and their contemporaries would be working a fifteen-hour workweek. Like so much of his economics and his predictions, he was wrong on this one. An increase in living standards did not diminish the workweek. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, average weekly hours have not decreased in the United States. If anything, they increased in the past decade or so. 

Even so, the fight for a shorter workweek is not a hopeless endeavor. Earlier this month, the Spanish government announced that it is going to run a pilot for a four-day workweek (or 32 hours). Although this has been a popular idea among Left-leaning political parties for decades, Henry Ford made the case to lower the workweek from 60 hours to 40 hours. Those who advocate for such a change argue that a shorter workweek would create such benefits as improved productivity, reduced absenteeism, better physical and mental health for workers, and reduced burnout. 

The country that has the closest thing to a four-day workweek is France. In 1998, France passed the Aubry laws, which mandated a 35-hour workweek. According to a study from economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there were two main findings. One is that unemployment remained unaffected. The second is that turnover increased (Estevão and Sá, 2008). At the same time, the 35-hour mark is less of a cap and more of a threshold at which overtime and rest days kick in. If it is true that the French de facto do not particularly adhere to this law (or have found workarounds), then we are not left with any good case studies on a national level. That leaves us with company-level case studies:

• The city government of Reykjavik implemented it for its employees. It resulted in greater work satisfaction, fewer sick days, and greater wellbeing. 
• The Henley Business School at the University of Reading surveyed over 200 businesses in the United Kingdom that implemented the four-day workweek. Aside from two-thirds of the businesses reporting increased productivity, there was also reported savings of £92 billion annually. 
• Japan has such an overworked society that the Japanese language has a term for "death by overwork" (過劳死). That is why it was nice to Microsoft Japan give it a go. What they found was an increased productivity of 40 percent, as well as saving energy costs. 
• Online education company Treehouse tried applying the four-day workweek. However, it went back to five days because productivity was an issue. 
• The nursing home in Svartedalen gained media coverage, but it had mixed results. Much like Treehouse, the nursing home went back to forty hours to cover time and economic productivity lost. At the same time, it created more jobs, had fewer sick days used, and better perceived wellbeing.
• A New Zealand trust company, Perpetual Guardian, did an experiment with a four-day workweek. There was better wellbeing, work-life balance, greater job satisfaction, and higher revenue. At the same time, there was more pressure to get work done in a shorter time period. You can review the study here.

It is true that longer work hours make us unhappier (Nakata, 2017) and less productive (Pencavel, 2014). Combine the aforementioned with the fact that there is such a work-life imbalance in the United States makes me more in favor of a four-day workweek. At the same time, we have seen mixed results from various case studies. A shorter workweek is not for every company or every industry. The hospitality industry or other industries that have client-facing are less capable of switching to a four-day workweek. 

Whether we are discussing the minimum wage, paid family leave, menstrual leave, or other employment rigidities, implementing such labor market rigidities come with a price. I am interested to see how the Spanish pilot program plays out. However, I would like to conclude by saying that each business make its own decision, and in the meantime, we convince employers of the benefits of the four-day workweek. We did not arrive at the forty-hour workweek through government fiat or by the grace of labor unions. We arrived at a forty-hour workweek through a market-based system in which employers realized that fewer hours and not overworking employees generally lead to greater productivity. I would wager that is how we will arrive to the four-day workweek this century.