Labor market is a competitive environment. It's not "I'll work less hours and buy a new car less often". It's "I need to save for a down-payment and I'm competi

Labor market is a competitive environment. It's not "I'll work less hours and buy a new car less often". It's "I need to save for a down-payment and I'm competing with people that work 40 hours or more" on top of "and don't have kids", and "both partners are working". The employer is thinking "I can hire someone that I have pay the insurance and other costs that works 40 hours, or someone I have to pay the same insurance and costs and works 32 hours". In a world in which labor was always scarce, and anyone is always in demand, it might have happened, but that's not the world we live in. It's actually a world in which having a good job is scarce, and home ownership is scarce, and a lot of other resources (services) are also scarce. Now - from a libertian-ish perspective - why jobs are scarce is another story, but we would first need to fix that.