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People have toyed with the idea of a 4-day workweek for over 80 years. Here's how the concept has evolved, from the Great Depression to Microsoft's latest successful experiment
People have toyed with the idea of a 4-day workweek for over 80 years. Here's how the concept has evolved, from the Great Depression to Microsoft's latest successful experiment
Mary MeisenzahlNov 7, 2019, 19:06 IST
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Microsoft recently implemented a four-day workweek at a subsidiary in Japan, leading to a 40% productivity increase.
A four-day workweek can either mean that employees work a traditional 40 hour week over four days, or that they work four typical eight-hour days totalling 32 hours per week.
A 30 hour workweek was popular in the early 20th century, but support dropped off following the Great Depression. Now, some companies are experimenting with the idea again.
A 40-hour, five-day workweek from Monday to Friday has been considered the standard schedule in the US since at least the Great Depression, even though almost a third of US workers today don't work that way.
Throughout the 20th century, scholars and activists predicted a decrease in hours the average worker would be on the clock as productivity increased. In 1928, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a 15-hour workweek within a century. In 1965, a Senate subcommittee predicted an even shorter 14-hour workweek by 2000, with seven weeks of vacation.
Some high-profile tech executives, like Google cofounder Larry Page, have praised the premise of a four-day workweek, and studies have shown that it could have benefits like decreasing burnout and lessening gender inequality.
However, a four-day workweek has yet to take hold on a large scale.
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Microsoft is the most recent example of a company experimenting with the idea. The Seattle-based tech giant recently implemented a four-day workweek in Japan, which led to a 40% jump in productivity. The company closed the office on Fridays in August and limited meetings, which made employees more productive than the previous August, despite working fewer hours.
Here's a history of how the four-day workweek began.
In the 1920s and 1930s, entrepreneurs like Henry Ford found that decreasing workweeks from 60-plus hours to 40 could actually increase productivity, according to Wharton professor Adam Grant.
In 1933, Congress nearly passed a 30-hour workweek bill to cut hours as an alternative to unemployment during the Depression, but it failed as opponents called it "communist."
Other New Deal legislation was a way to keep 30-hour workweek activists happy, like the Works Progress Administration, and the Federal Labor Standards Act, which mandated overtime pay past 40 hours.
After the Depression ended, hours increased and averages hovered around 40 hours, according to Wake Forest economics professor Robert Whaples. The movement for shorter hours dwindled.
Kellogg's was a notable exception, and workers voted in favor of a six-hour workday in 1946. But the company slowly moved toward an eight-hour day, and in 1985, the last department shifted to those hours.
Second- and third-wave feminism in the later half of the 20th century emphasized giving women access to paid work, and pressuring men to contribute more to unpaid domestic labor, rather than cutting overall paid working hours.
Some environmentalists have suggested that working less could be useful to curbing climate change, as workers consume fewer resources during their commutes. In Microsoft's case, electricity use went down nearly 25%.
According to a 2019 study, 40% of US workers would prefer a four-day week, and a development firm that analyzes these results says workers only get four hours of work done per day.
ZipRecruiter postings mentioning four-day weeks are reportedly up 67% this year, and have increased in similar numbers the past few years as companies compete to attract top hires.
The US remains an outlier compared to other countries. The average US worker works about 1,780 hours per year, compared to about 1,300 hours in Germany.
While some employers are toying with the idea of a shorter workweek, people are generally working longer hours and available for work outside the office. As the Wall Street Journal said "the phrase 'nine to five' is becoming an anachronism."
