The Four-Day Workweek

If you want to work less, you're not lazy. You just value yourself.

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In 1926 Henry Ford decided to give workers at his automobile plant one more day off per week.  

Henry Ford was no great humanitarian. I’m not here to sully the man’s name, but it is widely understood that he was an anti-Semite, and even worse, he hated Jazz.

Monster.  

Henry Ford instituted the five-day workweek because he saw that it would increase productivity. He did it because it was good for business. He was right. The four-day workweek is good for business now.

We should adopt it.

As I mentioned last week, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the 21^st century, much of the world would be enjoying a 15-hour work week due to the pace of economic growth and efficiency improvements. He was a little bit low on that number.

Science shows that most people simply can’t work at a high level for more than a couple of hours a day. Studies say that we can work 4 to 5 hours per day hour maximum for productive work.  If you assume a 5-hour day, you get less than the 4-day work week that I am proposing.  

Research from Stanford University shows that productivity sharply declines after 50 hours per week, and after 55 hours per week, productivity is so low that it is pointless. But the productivity curve begins to bend down sharply at about 4 -5 hours per day.

Let the AI do that part of my job.

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Pros and Cons of a four-day work week.

Let’s break down the pros and cons of a four-day workweek.

Pros

Better work-life balance - A four-day workweek gives us more time for life outside work. We can spend more time with family, and friends, on hobbies, on volunteer work, or just decompressing from work.

Mental health – For most people (not all of course) one less day of work would lead to less stress. Three days to unwind beats two days to unwind and will likely lower the rate of burnout in employees. Yes, we all have global communication devices in our pockets that bring the office to us seven days a week in some cases, and that likely won’t change. But being out of the office or away from Zoom calls for three days instead of two is a pretty attractive deal. If you find it more stressful to be around your family than at work, don’t worry, this transition will take time and there will be plenty of five-day-a-week jobs out there for a while.

Less environmental stresses – If the majority of the world moved to a four-day workweek, that would mean a majority of the planet was traveling less to work. People would still use their cars on their days off as we do now, but on average people already travel less on weekends than on their daily commute. You wouldn’t see a 20% drop in emissions (taking one out of five commutes away), but it would make a significant dent.

Moving from a world where 2/7 (29%) of our days are spent outside of work to one where 3/7 (43%) of our days are spent outside of work would change our cultures and the way we design our lives. Transportation infrastructure, and whole industries such as travel, entertainment, restaurants, and many others have evolved over the past 100 or so years based on a 5-day workweek. The world would evolve again with a four-day workweek.

Productivity – When there is less time to waste time, we tend to use it more wisely. As noted above, our limit for peak productivity is about 4 to 5 hours a day. Lean into that and get people to be productive either 5 days a week with shorter hours or 4 days a week with the current 8-hour-per-day schedule.

Cost savings – Employees who commute will get to spend 20% less on their weekly commuting bills. They will likely spend less on ancillary things like business lunches and entertaining clients, which will also likely taper off. Many companies will save on energy and utility costs, especially if they just close the office on Fridays instead of allowing flexible work schedules.

Cons

Scheduling – Not every business lends itself to a four-day workweek transition. Your average office worker, accountant, lawyer, or pencil pusher may seamlessly move to a four-day workweek; but what about service industries, law enforcement, or medical professionals who have to be in a place to serve the public every single day? Companies may need to hire more staff, which may lead to lower overall wages or the same amount of people as they employ now, but with fewer people at work each day.

More stress – Didn’t I just say less stress above? I did. The four-day workweek will be an adjustment and it won’t be for everyone or every company. In researching this story, I found examples where companies were looking to pack a forty-hour workweek into 4 days instead of 5. To this, I say – “You are defeating the purpose and missing the point.” A four-day workweek is about 32 hours of work (or less), not 40. If you make people work 10-hour days when our bodies are designed for about 4-5, you will break people. The eight-hour day we are used to now is already too much. Rates of stress and burnout are higher in people working longer shifts.

Businesses that depend on business may suffer – Those people who own restaurants, and newsstands, sell business clothes, sell business supplies, run the subway, and countless other businesses will see a decreased demand for their goods and services if we go into the office one less day per week.

You’re reading the wrong book.

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Think of the economy! No thanks.

Would a four-day workweek harm your local economy? As someone writing a newsletter focusing on degrowth, my answer is “I don’t care.”

I’m looking to help people get off the “growth for growth’s sake” treadmill, so I am indifferent to the potential impacts such a shift would have on economic growth. I would guess that it might slow economic growth, but I don’t know. Economists could model it, but there are so many things that would be impacted by a shift to a four-day workweek that we just won’t know until we try it. Some companies that depend on the rhythms of our current business-focused culture will be negatively affected, but other industries will be positively impacted. I don’t think this question matters to our societies and our civilizations as a whole.

Let me explain. The point of taking the degrowth path towards a steady-state economy is to put human outcomes above economic outcomes so that we live within our environmental means. The path we are on now is not sustainable and is self-destructive. A four-hour workweek is just one of many changes to the way we live that can help us live healthier, more fulfilling lives in which we lessen the deleterious impacts we have on the planet.

Take healthcare for example. If we implement a four-day workweek in many industries, and as a culture slowly move to ways of living or policies that reduce stress and increase health, we will be doing damage to the profitability of the global healthcare industry.

Not to be too cynical about it, but the healthcare industry profits when we are unhealthy. Moving to a more vegetarian diet, fewer subsidies for unhealthy foods, having more access to healthcare, paid family leave, job guarantees, universal basic income, and transportation systems designed to keep us moving and not sitting in cars, would make us a much healthier planet. In such a scenario we would need to consume less healthcare and that industry would likely suffer some.

Fine.

Right now, in the country I live in and in most industrialized countries, it is assumed that good economic outcomes for businesses will lead to good outcomes for you and me because good economic outcomes for businesses mean the economy grows and that is always good for everyone, right?

No.

Spends more time with loved ones.

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Give the people what they want.

People want to try out a four-day workweek.

Let them.

A 2022 survey by Joblist of 2,300 salaried employees in the United States revealed that 85% of employees believe that a four-day workweek is feasible for them. Ninety-four percent said that a four-day workweek would be an employee benefit that they would enjoy. While 28% of those surveyed said that they would be willing to take a pay cut if they could work only four days a week, most thought they should keep their current pay. After all, they wouldn’t be doing less work, they would just be doing the same amount of work over a shorter timeframe.

Some countries are already taking the lead. Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Iceland, Lithuania, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Ireland, South Africa, and others are already experimenting with some form of the four-day workweek.

What will you do when the four-day workweek comes for you?

I will probably just use that time to write a newsletter.

I suggest you aim higher than that.