4 ms·

UK four-day week pilot begins: employees get 100% of the pay for 80% of the time

anm89 4y ago
From an econometrics perspective, gdp essentially is a function of labor force size X worker productivity. Either this baseline assumption of economics is drastically wrong, this policy increases worker productivity by like 25% (which seems hyperbolic), or this policy is incompatible with continued economic growth. I'm not making any moral judgement on whether any of this is good or bad in any direction.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  If you start by assuming people only spend a small fraction of their workdays actually doing work, it seems very reasonable that the same amount of work could be achieved in shorter times.
  - anm89 4y ago
    That is essentially arguing that this causes a defacto 25% increase in productivity simply by cutting down on wasted time. Again I'm skeptical, but I do see the argument.
    - dotopotoro 4y ago
      Other factors to consider (at least theoretically possible): - shorter week is part of compensation; (possibility to atract more or/and better employees). - more people will start working/get hired; - productivity is not uniform thoughout a day/week (tiredeness); My best counterpoint at the same time is that intuitively I think that 1 person doing 5 days is more productive then 5 persons doing one day each, because communication/coordination does have a cost. (Surely tradeoffs and optimal points vary from role to role; some tasks are easier to parallelise)
  - throw8383833jj 4y ago
    yes. For some job functions (especially those in govt), I strongly suspect that "producitivity" is capped by factors beyond the control of employees at the bottom.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Consider productivity increases over the last 40 years while workweek hours remained the same. Workers are arguably already owed a 4 day work week. The idea that they would need to be even more productive to arrive at this shorter work week is not grounded in reality. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour-PennWorldTable https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    And in the end they are lucky if they are not fired because of the increased productivity.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    What does owed in this context? living standards and goods are not the same as 40 years ago.
- elzbardico 4y ago
  Growth is overrated. We sorely need to have financial architectures of capital that don't depend on the assumption of endless growth.
  - chii 4y ago
    If there's no growth, how will the people who are currently poorer become richer?
    - elzbardico 4y ago
      By having wealthier people become poorer by paying taxes. There's no mystery here. We've been making rich people wealthier with the middle-class taxes (including inflation, the most regressive tax ever invented), feeding all kinds of corporate welfare, including, but not limited to, the military industrial complex. It is about time we start thinking about taxing the rich. Alternatively, the rich can keep hoarding their money, pretending not to notice that their first-world economies are becoming increasingly similar to Somalia and that they will soon need armored vehicles and fortified condos to protect themselves from the desperate and famished masses.
      - moistly 4y ago
        But you see, they already don’t live among us, not really. They already live in private compounds with security, and private resorts with security, and gated estate communities with, you guessed it, security. We’re hardly likely to dine in the same restaurants as them, attend the same private screenings and concerts, vacation on the same beaches and slopes. They may make public appearances, but so do the wealthiest in any dysfunctional country: they do not live with us.
      - iqkznnft 4y ago
        I like it how it is now, and I'll fight people like you to keep it that way.
        imtringued 4y ago
- klyrs 4y ago
  > gdp essentially is a function of labor force size X worker productivity Sounds reasonable. But how do you measure "worker productivity?" Is a retail employee standing in an otherwise empty store "productive?" If you work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without sleep, are you "productive?" If you spend the weekend working on a side project, could that be "productive?"
  - chrisjharris 4y ago
    It is assumed that the wages you earn are a proxy for your productivity. This may sound dubious on the individual level but on the aggregate level it is not, an economy can only distribute in wages and other returns what it has earned from production.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      So, counter to OC, this wouldn't decrease productivity, would it.
      - chrisjharris 4y ago
        Not if it works as planned, no.
- joecot 4y ago
  This economic perspective was not updated for the advent of office and technological jobs. If you're running a factory, reducing total work hours by 20% would reduce output by about 20%. If you're writing software, doing desk job work, etc, this would not be the case. For example, how active is Hacker News during what would be expected to be work hours. How many people are taking time out of their work day to post on facebook, reddit, twitter, or here? People aren't doing 8 hours of technical work for 5 days a week. They have a certain amount they're expected to produce over the course of a week, and they spend their time accordingly. If they had 4 days to do it instead of 5, with the same length of a day, they would spend more of those 4 days doing productive work, and enjoy their 3 days off more, without feeling guilty during work hours about "slacking" when people really can't stay this technical, or creative, productive for 40 hours a week. This is also why tech CEOs and managers are so paranoid about people working from home. They know that the job doesn't really require 40 hours of work. They just want to make sure they're getting 40 hours of captive time.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  GDP should not be confused with production. It is a sum of transactions, not goods. I could make a $1 widget, then the two of us could exchange it back and forth to produce an arbitrarily High Gdp. At the end of the day, we would still have just one widget. [Edit: see valid criticism below] This becomes very clear when you look at economic breakdowns of GDP, where things like Finance and government are included
  - jsdaa 4y ago
    This is not true, the sale of used goods / intermediate goods / transfer payments is not counted in GDP [1]. As an aside, be careful with tone that sounds too sure. If I hadn't know, I would have guessed you knew a lot of this topic based on the tone you're using here. I personally try to sound more doubtful on topics I don't know enough about. [1]: https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/19-1-measuring-the-size-of-the-economy-gross-domestic-product/#:~:text=The%20sales%20of%20used%20goods,part%20of%20that%20year's%20GDP https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/19-1-mea....
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but I think it misses the mark when it comes to reality. In reality, I think a vast amount of double counting occurs. That said, the point that I was trying to get across was the decoupling of GDP from what most people would consider material well being. This mostly revolves around the growing proportion of GDPs being made up by finance and services. [think widget backed financial instruments, widget insurance, widget services, ect]
      - throwaway14356 4y ago
        what has GDP done for me??
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Show me where the GDP touched you
- jsdaa 4y ago
  I don't see why it has to be thought of this way. It's not a bad way to simplify things, but I don't think it's necessarily the only / main econometrics perspective. Why could a 4 day week result in similar / higher GDP? (not saying it WILL, just pointing out how it COULD) + A big chunk of the jobs are white collar / don't require you to physically be somewhere. If you're a security guard (and you're there mostly for deterrence reasons), then your productivity won't likely change much. Say you get a white collar worker that has a burnout, you'll be producing 10% of your potential. If that extra day of rest prevents the burnout you get x10 for that person. In less dramatic fashion, someone more energized and happy can easily increase productivity by 25% (at least in many of the white collar jobs I'm familiar with) + Network / dynamic effects. Some people won't be more productive, but they might spend the extra day off building something new / learning something new. Even if it's just, say 1/20 that do that, that might offset some of the decreased time working
- lumost 4y ago
  4 day work weeks may enlarge the working population and fuel demand for different services. Many modern jobs have dubious connections between hours worked and output.
- chrisjharris 4y ago
  You could see the shift to a four-day week as increasing aggregate demand while decreasing aggregate supply. Prima facie it might seem like fewer hours worked = lower total output = lower GDP, but the macro-economy is a complex system with many endogenous variables (inflation, foreign exchange, debt levels, etc), and the interactions between which can be quite subtle. A lot of schools of economics might put together an argument that this could increase GDP, rather than decrease it. To my mind it seems to increase quality of life which is a more relevant metric than GDP anyhow.
- _v7gu 4y ago
  [flagged]
- imtringued 4y ago
  It is entirely plausible that workers have become so productive that their specific skill set and job description only lets them work an effective 6 hours per day with the rest simply spent "on call" in the office. Also, reducing the work week can mean that people do not want further economic growth and prefer free time over more products and services.
ShaneMcGowan 4y ago
Having worked a 4 day work week for 100% pay for 6 months in my previous job, I would rather work a low stress job for 5 days than a stressful job for 4 days
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  I feel similarly except I prefer working a few hours seven days a week allowing for moments of burst creativity.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  I work 7 days of 4-5 hours for many years already. Definitely makes me more productive than anything else I have tried.
  - moistly 4y ago
    7d x 4|5h makes it so much easier to develop a solid routine of taking on several tasks every day, advancing all the other projects in one’s life (home maintenance, cleaning, cooking, shopping, etc.)
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  Not to be flippant but would you prefer 5 days of stress over 4. What i mean, is those two things are not necessarily related. I don't think its about squeezing 5 days of work into 4 days. Maybe expectations need to change, thats part of the process.
  - ShaneMcGowan 4y ago
    Great question! 4 days of stress was definitely better than 5 days of stress as I felt more recharged after the 3 day weekend. Also my output didn’t drop as I was feel less burnt out. My original comment still stands though, a stress free 5 days is much better overall than the stressful 4
ChrisRR 4y ago
These studies never seem to extend past the initial honeymoon period. I wonder if in months when they're not being observed, they go straight back to old levels of productivity
- Gigachad 4y ago
  That’s my suspicion. These trials have been happening for a long time now and still nothing more than “on week 3, the same amount got done.” If it was such an obvious win, I’d expect at least a little more long term changes and some companies promoting it. There were loads of companies promoting remote work before covid but almost nothing for reduced hours.
moistly 4y ago
Every time I have worked as an employee, I have been interrupted more, been in more wasteful meetings, watched most everyone fuck the dog and sell the pups. Literal hours wasted in visiting, chatting, snacking, staring into space. In my experience, few people are honestly, properly working eight hours a day. They are productive no more than two-thirds of it. Far, far less in offices that are open-concept, have games tables, or go out for lunch; rarely more, usually as a short-lived crunch-time thing. Which is to say a lot of people already work 80%. Nonetheless I think it’s time to move to 5d x 6h @ 100% pay or 4d x 6h @ 80% pay. I think 4d x 8h will have almost as much time-wasting as we currently have, and is not worth consideration.

From an econometrics perspective, gdp essentially is a function of labor force size X worker productivity. Either this baseline assumption of economics is drastically wrong, this policy increases worker productivity by like 25% (which seems hyperbolic), or this policy is incompatible with continued economic growth. I'm not making any moral judgement on whether any of this is good or bad in any direction.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
If you start by assuming people only spend a small fraction of their workdays actually doing work, it seems very reasonable that the same amount of work could be achieved in shorter times.
- anm89 4y ago
  That is essentially arguing that this causes a defacto 25% increase in productivity simply by cutting down on wasted time. Again I'm skeptical, but I do see the argument.
  - dotopotoro 4y ago
    Other factors to consider (at least theoretically possible): - shorter week is part of compensation; (possibility to atract more or/and better employees). - more people will start working/get hired; - productivity is not uniform thoughout a day/week (tiredeness); My best counterpoint at the same time is that intuitively I think that 1 person doing 5 days is more productive then 5 persons doing one day each, because communication/coordination does have a cost. (Surely tradeoffs and optimal points vary from role to role; some tasks are easier to parallelise)
- throw8383833jj 4y ago
  yes. For some job functions (especially those in govt), I strongly suspect that "producitivity" is capped by factors beyond the control of employees at the bottom.
toomuchtodo 4y ago
Consider productivity increases over the last 40 years while workweek hours remained the same. Workers are arguably already owed a 4 day work week. The idea that they would need to be even more productive to arrive at this shorter work week is not grounded in reality. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour-PennWorldTable https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...
- elzbardico 4y ago
  And in the end they are lucky if they are not fired because of the increased productivity.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  What does owed in this context? living standards and goods are not the same as 40 years ago.
elzbardico 4y ago
Growth is overrated. We sorely need to have financial architectures of capital that don't depend on the assumption of endless growth.
- chii 4y ago
  If there's no growth, how will the people who are currently poorer become richer?
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    By having wealthier people become poorer by paying taxes. There's no mystery here. We've been making rich people wealthier with the middle-class taxes (including inflation, the most regressive tax ever invented), feeding all kinds of corporate welfare, including, but not limited to, the military industrial complex. It is about time we start thinking about taxing the rich. Alternatively, the rich can keep hoarding their money, pretending not to notice that their first-world economies are becoming increasingly similar to Somalia and that they will soon need armored vehicles and fortified condos to protect themselves from the desperate and famished masses.
    - moistly 4y ago
      But you see, they already don’t live among us, not really. They already live in private compounds with security, and private resorts with security, and gated estate communities with, you guessed it, security. We’re hardly likely to dine in the same restaurants as them, attend the same private screenings and concerts, vacation on the same beaches and slopes. They may make public appearances, but so do the wealthiest in any dysfunctional country: they do not live with us.
    - iqkznnft 4y ago
      I like it how it is now, and I'll fight people like you to keep it that way.
      - imtringued 4y ago
klyrs 4y ago
> gdp essentially is a function of labor force size X worker productivity Sounds reasonable. But how do you measure "worker productivity?" Is a retail employee standing in an otherwise empty store "productive?" If you work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without sleep, are you "productive?" If you spend the weekend working on a side project, could that be "productive?"
- chrisjharris 4y ago
  It is assumed that the wages you earn are a proxy for your productivity. This may sound dubious on the individual level but on the aggregate level it is not, an economy can only distribute in wages and other returns what it has earned from production.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    So, counter to OC, this wouldn't decrease productivity, would it.
    - chrisjharris 4y ago
      Not if it works as planned, no.
joecot 4y ago
This economic perspective was not updated for the advent of office and technological jobs. If you're running a factory, reducing total work hours by 20% would reduce output by about 20%. If you're writing software, doing desk job work, etc, this would not be the case. For example, how active is Hacker News during what would be expected to be work hours. How many people are taking time out of their work day to post on facebook, reddit, twitter, or here? People aren't doing 8 hours of technical work for 5 days a week. They have a certain amount they're expected to produce over the course of a week, and they spend their time accordingly. If they had 4 days to do it instead of 5, with the same length of a day, they would spend more of those 4 days doing productive work, and enjoy their 3 days off more, without feeling guilty during work hours about "slacking" when people really can't stay this technical, or creative, productive for 40 hours a week. This is also why tech CEOs and managers are so paranoid about people working from home. They know that the job doesn't really require 40 hours of work. They just want to make sure they're getting 40 hours of captive time.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
GDP should not be confused with production. It is a sum of transactions, not goods. I could make a $1 widget, then the two of us could exchange it back and forth to produce an arbitrarily High Gdp. At the end of the day, we would still have just one widget. [Edit: see valid criticism below] This becomes very clear when you look at economic breakdowns of GDP, where things like Finance and government are included
- jsdaa 4y ago
  This is not true, the sale of used goods / intermediate goods / transfer payments is not counted in GDP [1]. As an aside, be careful with tone that sounds too sure. If I hadn't know, I would have guessed you knew a lot of this topic based on the tone you're using here. I personally try to sound more doubtful on topics I don't know enough about. [1]: https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/19-1-measuring-the-size-of-the-economy-gross-domestic-product/#:~:text=The%20sales%20of%20used%20goods,part%20of%20that%20year's%20GDP https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/19-1-mea....
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but I think it misses the mark when it comes to reality. In reality, I think a vast amount of double counting occurs. That said, the point that I was trying to get across was the decoupling of GDP from what most people would consider material well being. This mostly revolves around the growing proportion of GDPs being made up by finance and services. [think widget backed financial instruments, widget insurance, widget services, ect]
    - throwaway14356 4y ago
      what has GDP done for me??
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Show me where the GDP touched you
jsdaa 4y ago
I don't see why it has to be thought of this way. It's not a bad way to simplify things, but I don't think it's necessarily the only / main econometrics perspective. Why could a 4 day week result in similar / higher GDP? (not saying it WILL, just pointing out how it COULD) + A big chunk of the jobs are white collar / don't require you to physically be somewhere. If you're a security guard (and you're there mostly for deterrence reasons), then your productivity won't likely change much. Say you get a white collar worker that has a burnout, you'll be producing 10% of your potential. If that extra day of rest prevents the burnout you get x10 for that person. In less dramatic fashion, someone more energized and happy can easily increase productivity by 25% (at least in many of the white collar jobs I'm familiar with) + Network / dynamic effects. Some people won't be more productive, but they might spend the extra day off building something new / learning something new. Even if it's just, say 1/20 that do that, that might offset some of the decreased time working
lumost 4y ago
4 day work weeks may enlarge the working population and fuel demand for different services. Many modern jobs have dubious connections between hours worked and output.
chrisjharris 4y ago
You could see the shift to a four-day week as increasing aggregate demand while decreasing aggregate supply. Prima facie it might seem like fewer hours worked = lower total output = lower GDP, but the macro-economy is a complex system with many endogenous variables (inflation, foreign exchange, debt levels, etc), and the interactions between which can be quite subtle. A lot of schools of economics might put together an argument that this could increase GDP, rather than decrease it. To my mind it seems to increase quality of life which is a more relevant metric than GDP anyhow.
_v7gu 4y ago
[flagged]
imtringued 4y ago
It is entirely plausible that workers have become so productive that their specific skill set and job description only lets them work an effective 6 hours per day with the rest simply spent "on call" in the office. Also, reducing the work week can mean that people do not want further economic growth and prefer free time over more products and services.

ShaneMcGowan 4y ago

Having worked a 4 day work week for 100% pay for 6 months in my previous job, I would rather work a low stress job for 5 days than a stressful job for 4 days

mathgladiator 4y ago
I feel similarly except I prefer working a few hours seven days a week allowing for moments of burst creativity.
tluyben2 4y ago
I work 7 days of 4-5 hours for many years already. Definitely makes me more productive than anything else I have tried.
- moistly 4y ago
  7d x 4|5h makes it so much easier to develop a solid routine of taking on several tasks every day, advancing all the other projects in one’s life (home maintenance, cleaning, cooking, shopping, etc.)
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
Not to be flippant but would you prefer 5 days of stress over 4. What i mean, is those two things are not necessarily related. I don't think its about squeezing 5 days of work into 4 days. Maybe expectations need to change, thats part of the process.
- ShaneMcGowan 4y ago
  Great question! 4 days of stress was definitely better than 5 days of stress as I felt more recharged after the 3 day weekend. Also my output didn’t drop as I was feel less burnt out. My original comment still stands though, a stress free 5 days is much better overall than the stressful 4

ChrisRR 4y ago

These studies never seem to extend past the initial honeymoon period. I wonder if in months when they're not being observed, they go straight back to old levels of productivity

Gigachad 4y ago
That’s my suspicion. These trials have been happening for a long time now and still nothing more than “on week 3, the same amount got done.” If it was such an obvious win, I’d expect at least a little more long term changes and some companies promoting it. There were loads of companies promoting remote work before covid but almost nothing for reduced hours.

moistly 4y ago

Every time I have worked as an employee, I have been interrupted more, been in more wasteful meetings, watched most everyone fuck the dog and sell the pups. Literal hours wasted in visiting, chatting, snacking, staring into space. In my experience, few people are honestly, properly working eight hours a day. They are productive no more than two-thirds of it. Far, far less in offices that are open-concept, have games tables, or go out for lunch; rarely more, usually as a short-lived crunch-time thing. Which is to say a lot of people already work 80%. Nonetheless I think it’s time to move to 5d x 6h @ 100% pay or 4d x 6h @ 80% pay. I think 4d x 8h will have almost as much time-wasting as we currently have, and is not worth consideration.