People Want To Work Less. Could a Four-Day Workweek Be on the Horizon?
As millions of people quit their job, could a shortened workweek be the solution to bringing people back to work?
Lynne Homan hasn’t worked a 40-hour workweek in nearly five years, a luxury afforded to her by the nature of her job as a freelance court reporter and wages that allow her to earn enough money working only 30 hours a week. At 58 years old, she says this gives her “the freedom to enjoy life the way you’re supposed to.”
Prioritizing life outside of work hasn’t always been the norm. Ms. Homan recalls a time when choosing to work less would have been looked down upon. “A lot of people my age, old school, they’re not like that,” she says. “They work more, they work 50 or 60 hours a week, you know, if you don’t you’re lazy.”
This may have been the prevailing attitude towards working until March 2020, when suddenly Americans found themselves trading their suits for sweatpants and their morning commute for a stroll to the living room. Now, as vaccine rates rise and Covid-19 cases fall, it seems that people are hesitant to give up the freedom they found in their year and a half at home. Amid what some are calling the ‘Great Resignation,’ a reported 4.3 million workers have left the workforce as of August 2021, leaving employers and legislators scrambling for a solution and workers in a position to negotiate one.
Joining higher wages and permanent remote positions on the list of these potential solutions is the four-day workweek, which has gained popularity recently among companies, governments and citizens alike. In July of 2021, a United States Congressman from California, Mark Takano, introduced a bill that, if passed, would change a New Deal Era labor standard, allowing hourly wage employees to begin collecting overtime pay at 32 hours rather than 40. Without waiting for a change in the law, a growing cohort of companies are deciding independently to make the switch to a shorter workweek.
Technology companies appear to be leading the way in implementing this change. Back in August of 2019, Microsoft Japan cut their workweek to just four days and quickly saw a 40% increase in productivity. On October 18, Tyler McGinnis, the CEO of ui.dev, an e-learning website that teaches JavaScript to its subscribers, announced on Twitter that his company would be doing the same. He hopes that this decision will help attract highly qualified individuals to work for him.
“For what we hire for, you have to be both highly technical as well as an effective writer and communicator,” he says. “We’re hoping a four-day workweek will help us both find and attract that type of talent.” Mr. McGinnis understands the potential benefits of working fewer hours, stating “doing highly technical creative work is draining, and I don’t imagine anyone is doing it well for more than four to five hours a day.”
This change is something that Maggie, a 22-year-old paralegal, would like to see happen in her line of work as well. The recent college graduate works five days a week at her first job — four days in the office and the fifth at home. Already, she sees the appeal of working just Monday through Thursday. “I would be a big supporter of that,” she says. “I feel like on Fridays, on the fifth day, even though it’s from home, by the end of the week I’m so tired it’s hard to get stuff done.”
Exhaustion and limited personal time are just a few of the complaints cited in defense of a shorter workweek. Another is that, for many jobs, a five-day week is simply unnecessary. But, for the nearly 10 million Americans that find themselves working more than 60 hours a week — and even those who work the standard 40 — reducing the time they work by such an amount may seem unfeasible. Low wages and demanding workloads might even make this impossible.
Zeien, an operations manager for a hospitality group in New York City explains that four days wouldn’t provide him enough time to get everything done. “…In our company we have a few restaurants, so in my situation, I don’t think that would be enough for it,” he says. “I hope it would work, but currently I don’t think it would work. My company would need another person to do the work.”
Though wages and employment practices may have to change alongside reduced hours in order for the four-day workweek to become the new standard, employers could soon find themselves with little choice but to comply with the demands of employees who are unwilling to put up with their current conditions.
