So why aren't we down to 17 hour workweeks in 2022?
An outline of questions to explore over the coming weeks
After 1940, the decrease in the length of the workweek slowed significantly and approached the 40 hour week we are familiar with today. Looking at this chart might suggest that our current workweek has some sort of "natural" lower limit.
However, starting in 1950 we have some more robust international comparisons. These suggest that if there’s a lower limit to an efficient workweek, it’s definitely under 40 hours. France and Germany have taken a notably different course (measured in annual working hours, accounting for vacation and other time off). Productivity in Germany in 2017 was higher than the U.S., and France was not far behind.
These charts bring up more questions than they answer. Here are a few that I will cover over the coming weeks:
Would you rather have more free time or more stuff? And when do workers have a choice?
Is the government keeping the workweek long? How has policy has explicitly and implicitly influenced the length of the workweek?
How much more productivity would we actually need to get to a 15 hour workweek?
Do Millennials really not want to work anymore? How much do generational differences really affect the length of the workweek?
Then, we can turn to the present and future, and attempt to answer our original question: what will the typical workweek look like in the year 2120?