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Tokyo is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees

704 points by amichail 2y ago

7thaccount 2y ago
That sounds....huge. I know many working couples where one would probably take that in a heartbeat. You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge, not to mention clocking out early each day to be able to pick up your kid and not have to get back to work or whatever.
- Heliosmaster 2y ago
  Yep, completely agree. After having our kid both me and my wife work 80% so we have one extra day at home. Huge.
- jajko 2y ago
  Not sure about rest of the world, but here in Switzerland mothers often take Wednesdays off - first years of school its not on Wednesdays, and then it starts with just mornings. Wife has it and she repeatedly claimed that she will never go back to 5 days workweek. Most employers, be it private or state ones have 0 issues with this setup. 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway. What is gained is very well worth it, time with parents is crucial in many ways for small kids and if that window is missed you can't make it up later. Catching up with stuff like bureaucracy which is unavailable during weekends is possible only during such time. Its true that having kids fundamentally changed my view on wealth and how much should I pursue higher paychecks, life is darn short anyway and double that with kids. I am switching to 90% contract from 1.1.2025 - working usual 5 days a week but having altogether 48.5 MDs of paid vacation (90% of 25MDs I had on 100% + 0.5 MD per each week in year, our HR recipe). It feels like being a teacher but on corporate paycheck (and work intensity). Even with 4 mortgages (for 2 properties) and no family to help financially if we hit hardships, this was a nobrainer. Other aspect would be retiring in 60 (max 61), but that's too far down the line to care much about now. I am looking very much into spending that time on family and myself. One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races. For such benefits alone I don't care about higher paychecks, money only can get you so far in life.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - jefbyokyie 2y ago
    > 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway or else, something maybe horribly broken in your country. I'm happy for you, that you can easily dismiss 15% net income. Try that in Hungary, where generally two full time jobs together are nearly insufficient just to stay afloat. > One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races Very true, which is why mental health issues are rampant in the Eastern Bloc.
    - StefanBatory 2y ago
      Doesn't help that the average attitude of people here of mental health is that it doesn't exist. My family used to believe, adn they still do, that the only reason you'd go to psychiatrist is because you're "weird" and that only crazies who belong in mental hospital go there...
- chachacharge 2y ago
  I kind of doubt this will be adopted practically in Japan. The old people get time off and leave work early in Japan by privilege and the young break themselves and any rule they need to permit it. The young would even lie about taking time off to make the boss look good, even taking less pay to sell the lie. Who can have kids when you already have to change everyone's diaper.
  - encoderer 2y ago
    Fascinating. Is the loyalty reciprocated?
    - wubrr 2y ago
      If the subordinates have to lie about taking time off, and intentionally accept lower pay for the benefit of their superiors - then no, it's definitely not reciprocated. I'd argue the subordinates are straight up being abused in this case.
      - l33tbro 2y ago
        I'm not saying you are wrong here, but I think it is important to ground all of these old:young dynamics in culture. 'Subordinate', to me, is a very western lens and looks past the crucial point that the Japanese view power structures with far more optimism than we do. Japan clearly has its own problems, but honour and duty play a significant part in their culture and, admirably, contributes to the creation of a high-trust society.
        coliveira 2y ago
        Arguably, the Japanese view a society that takes care of the elderly with respect as a benefit to themselves. In the other hand, it is a characteristic of Western society to see every moment as an opportunity to make immediate profits, even at the expense of their own future.
        2y ago
- cavisne 2y ago
  The issue is in corporate jobs (including tech) Friday is a very relaxed day. If you are working a shorter week than everyone else, you end up doing the same amount of work in less time for less money.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    I did this a few years ago at a company I was a partner in. We had a busy season where folks did overtime. The expectation for salaried employees was a 4-day, 35 hour week, but during that 3-4 week period, it may surge more. 35 hour weeks used to be pretty common in a lot of businesses before the overtime rules were watered down.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    My experience, especially post-COVID, is that meetings on Friday are discouraged and nobody blinks at noon departures. Etc. Not quite a four-day work week but came pretty close for a lot of folks.
  - NoLinkToMe 2y ago
    Agreed, the Friday is essentially the day with the highest pay:effort ratio. It's a 20% salary for relatively little effort. And given a ratio of 80% spending and 20% saving, that Friday can be the difference between living paycheck-to-paycheck and early retirement. Essentially if you make 5k a month, spend 4k and invest 1k at an 8% ROI from age 25, you'll have: 180k, 570k and 1400k at age 35, 45 and 55 respectively. If you live off of 4% of that, you'll have a passive income of $0.6k, $1.9k and $4.6k respectively at the same ages. In other words working that relaxed Friday from age 25 and investing the proceeds, will get you to the point that you passively earn the same as you did working Monday through Thursday by age 52 or so, without working again. And that's true for any income, at those same ratios. For many tech jobs the salaries are so high that you can feasibly get to early retirement in your 30s. There's a lot to be said about the power of a 3-day weekend though. It's not just that you get an extra day of weekend, you also lose a day of work. Expressed as a ratio, is when it clicked for me: You go from 5:2 to 4:3, or in other words: 2.5 days of work for every 1 day of leisure -> 1.3 days of work for every 1 day of leisure. It's approximately twice as good a ratio. And you really feel it, you feel rested and refreshed. I'm still doing 5d a week. For me the holy grail is to find a company that does 36h contracts with fulltime pay, where you have a 4 day week every other week. All the benefits of full pay, the occasional relaxed friday, but also two long weekends each month allowing trips, hobbies, projects, rest etc.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  A long time ago when I was an intern at a defense contractor my boss was a woman who had worked her whole career 30 hours a week and was very happy about it, kept it up even when her kids were graduating high school. I also enjoyed the 9/80 schedule there, nominally 9 hour days with a little flexibility with every other Friday off for everyone.
- blendo 2y ago
  Prior to retirement, I cut back to 32 hrs/week at 80% pay (well, closer to 85% because I kept my full health). I backfilled the pay cut by beginning a small 401k withdrawl. All of a sudden, every Thursday evening felt like the start of vacation!
  - ghaff 2y ago
    It sort of happened with me by default. Probably didn't take as much advantage as I should. And "retirement" is much less retirement than it could be.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I worked out a 9hr/4 days week with my current company, I get more work done in those 36 hours than I did in the 40 hours before because I’m more relaxed after a long weekend and considerably happier
- viraptor 2y ago
  I took that option 4 years ago and wouldn't go back now. It's not worth the increase in money vs the life improvement.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    That's only because you have enough money. There's plenty of people who are still financially short after a 40h job.
- znpy 2y ago
  > You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge during my last job search i was thinking exactly the same. id' hapily give up the usual 10-15% pay rise i look for when hopping from one job to another, maybe even consider giving up a 5-15% in order to get a 4-days work week. I'm not rich by any means, but right now in my life "more money" don't appeal to me that much but more free time certainly does.
- neycoda 2y ago
  Too many people in the US are living paycheck to paycheck on hourly wages, many with two people in the household working full-time. This is becoming normal. A 4-day workweek will hurt them.
  - dlmilli 2y ago
    [dead]
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    not if they get to work 4 days and get paid 5
MBCook 2y ago
I wish these stories would say if the hours are changing or not. 32 hours, 4 days a week seems better to me. But if all you do is take 40 hours and make it 10 hour days I’m not that much happier.
- alienreborn 2y ago
  I would still take 40 hrs in 4 days vs 5 days. Full extra day is a blessing.
- Filligree 2y ago
  It's Japan, so they alread have 10 if not 12 hour days, a lot of which isn't work in any sense. Cutting day out of the week also means removing the near-obligatory after-work 'socialising'.
- FigurativeVoid 2y ago
  I have had friends and family that work 4x10s or even 3x12s and they all vastly prefer the trade-off of more hours per work day for fewer days.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    I’d still likely take the option, I just think it’s unnecessary. Productivity is ridiculously up since the 8 hour day was established, even since just two decades ago. Tasks expand to take up the available time, even if usefulness doesn’t. I suspect you’d see little loss in cutting down to 32/hr/week, and I suspect it would be more than made up for by the gains of giving people that extra day. So it may be a net positive. I guess my main concern is that a lot of companies (not speaking about Japan here, just the US) might decide to use four days a week as a way to make people crunch four days thinking that having three days off would make up for that. And things wouldn’t really be any better.
    - bsimpson 2y ago
      That's the unfortunate bit about salaries. If you took a 4x per week job, you'd usually get a 20% pay reduction; however, many jobs could be compressed to 4 days without any loss in productivity.
FigurativeVoid 2y ago
Clarifying point: this is the Tokyo local government not a national policy.
- deleted 2y ago
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- teractiveodular 2y ago
  And even in Tokyo it only applies to metropolitan (roughly, state) workers, not the ward (roughly, city) governments. According to the data below, there's anywhere from 33k to 161k metropolitan employees depending on where you draw the line. https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2024/01/26/05.html https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2024/01...
  - urthor 2y ago
    A very important clarification. Sounds like office workers only.
antisthenes 2y ago
Too little too late. It may have an impact on the next generation, in 10-20 years, if at all. Also, for government employees only...
- mikestew 2y ago
  The best time to plant a tree, and all… Surely your argument isn’t, “at this point, why bother to do anything?”
  - antisthenes 2y ago
    > Surely your argument isn’t, “at this point, why bother to do anything?” Surely if the effort exceeds the value of the outcome, then it shouldn't be done?
    - kirubakaran 2y ago
      You haven't made an argument for that point at all
      - antisthenes 2y ago
        I haven't made an argument against it either. I merely estimated the realistic impact.
matt3210 2y ago
Better: work with families to alternate remote days so one parent stays home with the kids and no need for childcare service
- Heliosmaster 2y ago
  Do you really think that being remote is "staying home with the kids"? You're physically in the same building as them, but either you're not really working, or your kids don't actually need an adult to be there because they are grown up anyway, so no childcare is needed because they go to school.
- writtenAnswer 2y ago
  Many jobs might be in-person especially in Japan
hunglee2 2y ago
its got to help, but the main thing Japan needs to do is de-Toykoify the country. Urban density is probably the main causes for decline in fertility, and Tokyo is the worst example globally of runaway urban agglomeration.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  People choose to live in Tokyo. They tried to give a buttloads of incentives to move to the countryside, but few take them, because… city life is just easier, more convenient and more fun. But I still agree, it might affect it in a roundabout way. When you live in a city, you have more opportunities to do anything else other than having children. Also, Japan’s fertility rate isn’t that much lower than Canadas. They just got to the problem earlier than anyone else, so trying to resolve it with any possible means. The biggest problem still continues though — there’s no real reason or incentive to have more than 2 children, other than “for the good of the society”. And women are less likely to sacrifice bare minimum of 6 years of their lives to give birth to 3 children. Especially when they can do… literally anything else. Every educated girl friend of mine thinks exactly the same way as well. Some had a child or two, but more than that it’s just a burden to the couple. I’m obviously simplifying things, and once the third child is born, they’re loved and etc. But it’s going to be a very hard sell for anyone.
- Hilift 2y ago
  Depopulation resulted in an oversupply of nine million housing vacancies outside the cities. Tokyo pays people a million yen per child to move out of the city. It looks like the population plateaued about 10 years ago and is trending down slightly. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/21671/tokyo/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/21671/toky...
pamelafox 2y ago
Would schools and childcare providers also have 4-day workweeks? I really appreciate that I have 5 days of childcare now, as I find it exhausting to be 24/7 parenting two lil kids for two days straight (the weekends). If the norm was 4-day workweeks, I would pay my nanny overtime for Fridays. And then yes, maybe I'd get chores done on Friday! Currently, chores just don't get done ever. :D
- pamelafox 2y ago
  " It separately announced another policy that will allow parents with children in grades one to three in elementary schools to trade off a bit of their salary for the option to clock out early." This is really nice, this was the option that I wanted for my first kid. I would want this from the day they were born though, not just grades 1-3. It helps with breastfeeding scheduling.
- sahila 2y ago
  What about the nanny wanting a 4 day work week, and what if they have children of their own?
  - pamelafox 2y ago
    Indeed! My nanny does have kids of her own. So I would either pay her overtime or I would find additional childcare for the 5th day. I'm just pointing this out because I hear "4 day workweek" talked about a lot, but it's never clear to me if folks mean that everyone is getting those 4 days, including childcare providers or teachers, and if that's actually what folks want. People in this thread talk about getting chores done, but I'm not getting any chores done if I'm taking care of my lil kids, I'm just getting an even messier house. :D
WillyWonkaJr 2y ago
Japan is forecast to still have 50 million people in 2120. I wouldn't call this a population crisis. With some rewilding it could be quite pleasant! I suspect companies are afraid of not growing, and governments are afraid to cut spending. Source: https://www.jcer.or.jp/english/new-population-projection-how-does-it-differ-from-the-old-one https://www.jcer.or.jp/english/new-population-projection-how...
- jorblumesea 2y ago
  It's not about the amount of people but your population pyramid. If your population halves, expect a lot of pain. Especially for the elderly.
  - cableshaft 2y ago
    Especially for something like Social Security safety nets, which relies on a larger younger population paying into it. I'm not sure if Japan has an equivalent but I think they do.
    - WillyWonkaJr 2y ago
      This is a great argument for individual retirement accounts rather than using the young to pay for the elderly. In the United States, if everyone's social security tax were put in an index fund, then everyone would be millionaires upon retirement. There are solutions other than pleading with people to have more kids.
      - lenerdenator 2y ago
        The idea behind OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance), more commonly known as Social Security, is not that you retire a millionaire. It's the US government saying "since we are a wealthy nation, we will not let you spend your elderly years destitute." That's it. That's literally all it is. It was meant to keep grandpa from being a burden on his family when he was too old to work, which in the 1930s meant when you were too old to do actual physical labor. Since then the American public has seen it as a nice little bonus they get for living past 65 and has started stealing from younger generations in the form of sovereign debt in order to maintain that instead of treating it like the insurance policy it actually is.
reverendsteveii 2y ago
I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.
- Spivak 2y ago
  And treat parenting as something other than a passion project you work on nights and weekends.
- nkzd 2y ago
  I am not sure about this one. In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.
  - bbqfog 2y ago
    Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!
    - Asraelite 2y ago
      Try asking that after spending a while living in a tenement building with 3 people per room and frequent outbreaks of dysentery and smallpox.
      - bbqfog 2y ago
        People still live like this today.
        cowgoesmoo 2y ago
        extremely rare in countries with falling birth rates
    - 2y ago
Barrin92 2y ago
>Many sociologists attribute the ever-plunging birth rates to Japan’s unforgiving work culture and rising costs of living. It still seems like an incredibly odd argument to me given that the birth rate is only marginally lower than in the most generous, least working European nations. Hungary spent 5%(!) of its GDP on direct family support and it did very little (raised the birth rate by 0.15 give or take). I wonder when people will just acknowledge that most of the secular decline of 1-2 children is simply down to personal choice, family planning, education and financial freedom. (and adjust economic policies accordingly)
- MobiusHorizons 2y ago
  > adjust economic policies accordingly What do you have in mind? My understanding is that this is not something there is much of an economic solution for short of canceling benefits (pensions / medical care)
  - standardUser 2y ago
    Immigration solves the issue entirely. Maybe not perpetually, but for the foreseeable future.
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    Pension reform is unpopular but will need to happen in developed economies at some point or otherwise the youth that remains will completely crash out. One positive of the population pyramid is that the small next generations stand to inherit quite a lot softening it to some extent. But it's necessary. Not enough discussed is also how much potential for labour saving tech there is. The most 20 common jobs almost haven't changed in decades. Retail, transport, clerks, back office, admin, even without magic "AI" solutions, if we wanted to we could design work around drastically cutting labour already. It's actually one benefit of the demographics, a lot of automation isn't happening because manual labour is cheap in a lot of places, so there's potential for growth even.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  The policies that make schooling and childcare free in Japan are very nice. The problem is that it doesn’t move the needle. At least in Tokyo it’s more or less impossible to not have two working parents and own a house. Outside of Tokyo, you might own a house, but there’s no jobs and everyone around you is 60+
lordleft 2y ago
I think this is an overall good move, and very much support it, but many countries with better work-life balance and robust support for new parents still see declining birth rates....I can't help but think that a decline in fertility rates is as much about values -- what the point of life itself is, and how much it should be bound up in what we call the family -- as it is about the material conditions surrounding the act of child-rearing.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  I don’t necessarily disagree with you that values are more impactful, but personally I think it’s very difficult/nearly impossible to intentionally steer a culture’s values. Do you think there is anything procedural/structural that could be impactful for declining birth rates?
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  We'd totally be OK with "mistakenly" improving work/like balance and then earnestly try to find other solutions to the birth rate problem. Otherwise I don't think there's a single unique solution. No having a miserable life is probably a good firth step that enables more advanced and varied measures.
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Nickersf 2y ago
I don't think it will boost the fertility rate in any significant way. I think the only way to really make a dent in low fertility rates is to incentivize mothers to stay at home and men to work full-time at least for the first five years of a child's life. I know people disagree with this, but it's worth considering if the declining birth rates are a major concern for the State.
- pamelafox 2y ago
  I'm curious if you have tried taking care of a young child 24/7, it is exhausting work. Some mothers are able to do it, but I find it really helps to be able to alternate between childcare and work, to give me a break. I do think that remote work is great for mothers though, as it makes pumping/nursing more doable, whether we are working or not. Perhaps the government can provide more subsidies for quality childcare.
  - helsinki 2y ago
    Just get divorced and only spend a few days per week with your kid. Honestly, it's pretty good.
- standardUser 2y ago
  A better policy would be to incentivize any parent to stay home for the first few years. Restricting it to mothers would only reduce the appeal of the policy and result in fewer takers, so why default to a more restrictive approach?
wwwlouishinofun 2y ago
The pleasure of sexual activity is not strongly linked to pregnancy. This kind of human intervention was unexpected in the evolution of nature.
Aeolun 2y ago
As much as I enjoy the concept, it’s already nearly impossible to get any goverment work done in Japan without taking a day off yourself. Everything government is open 9 to 5 and no more. It’d be more exciting if this was basically anywhere else, but I guess we have to start somewhere.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Hopefully the workers don't all take off the same day and the company backfills the hours with new 4 days/week workers.
jonny_eh 2y ago
Is this the largest test/rollout of a 4 day work week ever?
jmward01 2y ago
This focuses on fertility, but the bigger deal here is it creates jobs. Because when you reduce the availability of labor you create more jobs and spur the economy. Not only will more people have jobs, but they will have more time to spend money. So this is potentially a win for the local economy.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  If they’re just reshuffling the existing work to a larger pool of people, do you really improve the economy? If anything I’d expect efficiency to decrease?
- orangecat 2y ago
  This is a variant of the broken window fallacy. Paying more in labor for the same amount of output is not good for the economy.
  - jmward01 2y ago
    This isn't destroying anything so I'm not sure why you say this has anything to do with the broken window fallacy or why this could be bad for the economy. Since there is confusion here, I'll pose this as a different thought experiment to make my points more clear: If it isn't good for the economy to reduce the average hours per worker then does that mean it is good for the economy to increase them? If we reduce the free-time of people then they will have even less time to spend their money and consume goods. Arguably they would also have less incentive to care about free-time activities that they can only, at best, sample. The basic question I am raising is why is 5 days of 8 hours magically the right number. I'd argue that the more free time people have the more chance to consume they have. We balance that with the need to produce though. So an optimum point is actually driven by efficiency. The more efficient we are the more we should be diverting to free-time in order to drive more demand for the the. efficient goods we are producing. In a world where we are infinitely efficient then 100% of time should be spent in free-time in order to consume the most goods produced by that infinite efficiency. We aren't there yet so we still need to balance production against free-time but we are more efficient than we were 20 years ago so we should be finding ways to give back free-time to drive up demand.
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mclau156 2y ago
The idea of working 5 days a week began when an extra day of working meant you could manufacture an extra 100 cars, workload in the Tokyo government is not going to suffer much output at all if any by going to working 4 days a week
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
So… five days? Maybe government work is different from private industry work, but the folks at my company worked six days a week, with Saturday being a “half day” (only 8 hours). However, Saturday wasn’t an “official” office day, so casual attire was allowed, and the A/C was often turned off. I hated going in on Saturdays.
dfxm12 2y ago
Shorter hours for less pay feels like a trap for salaried workers, unless your duties are also very formally lessened. I know people who have been granted similar schedules, but their managers simply expected them to get the same amount of work done, but in less time, for less pay.
- agnishom 2y ago
  I agree. If I made 20% less money and worked 20% less at my main job, I would still need to make up for that 20% of my income. That could be a difficult position to be in.
agnishom 2y ago
Surprisingly progressive policy. I know this is mostly tangential, but I think that this should be the way humanity should benefit from technology. Better technology shouldn't just exist to make capitalists richer, but it should exist to make everyone richer. One of the most important ways you can be richer is to have more time.
icandoit 2y ago
for parents only?
camgunz 2y ago
Guys if this is happening in Tokyo of all places, no one else has any excuse.
zombiwoof 2y ago
Elon Musk is pissed
dukeofdoom 2y ago
Ai should run government
joemazerino 2y ago
Government employees need to work more, not less.
makeitdouble 2y ago
For context, while Japan has a reputation of a shitty place for work culture, a lot has changed. Not everything, but many more companies will allow for flexible hours for instance, full remote has stayed in many places, and more traditional place usually allow one or two days or remoting every week. There is a communal sense that growth is basically gone and better conditions are negotiable. Newer companies have been offering better conditions and older companies are having to compete and follow up to some point. This initiative is following that trend. Schools are facing the same "adapt or get shunned" situation where just nobody wants to be a teacher and family/friends will actively try to stop someone from going there. So things are changing.
- gretch 2y ago
  Why is it bad to be a teacher in Japan?
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    To put it mildly, it's a shitty job. I don't think it's an easy job in most countries, but in Japan in particular the pay is low, hours are long and the expected work load is super heavy as it includes endless meetings, paperwork, watching extracurricular activities often including on weekends, seasonal events etc. Some still enjoy it as a vocation, but on paper it's just mind crushing. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3580/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3580/
    - gretch 2y ago
      Thanks, I didn’t know that about Japan
AdrianB1 2y ago
Governments destroyed the notion of family. Now they want kids. Nobody sees the contradiction?
- warkdarrior 2y ago
  How did the Japanese government destroy the notion of family?
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insane_dreamer 2y ago
OK, but are they going to take that time off? I mean technically they have 5 day work weeks now, but Japanese "salarymen" are notorious for working 80 hours weeks. (Though maybe this isn't the case for government workers) Just getting people down to working 40 hours / week would be a huge improvement in QOL.
urthor 2y ago
How does this even work in Japan after this change. There's so many stories of corporate overwork. Does the entire country just desperately want to work for the government?
- DriverDaily 2y ago
  I guess only Nixon could go to China? When the US government adopts an employment policy private companies usually follow. Either because they do business with the government and have to comply, or it affects so many people there's a shift in norms.
exabrial 2y ago
In the USA, make it zero days. Same amount of work would get done by the government, and people would realize what a waste it is.
lazylizard 2y ago
raising a kid to 18 costs how much? stopping a career and foregoing 18 years of promotions cost how much? governments are just mucking about with the garnishings and ignoring the meat of the matter. but then maybe they cant afford it, either. hah.
option 2y ago
Sounds like Tokyo has too many government employees.
mhb 2y ago
Wow. So three or four more days than US federal workers!
752963e64 2y ago
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ein0p 2y ago
Meh. Per some recent reports a significant fraction of government employees in the US already enjoys zero day work weeks, fully paid, and has enjoyed them for years.
feverzsj 2y ago
For government employees only. That's why Japanese call these people tax thieves.
switch007 2y ago
We're firmly in the "4 days but no change to pay" honeymoon phase. Do people really think new 4 day roles, if it becomes the norm, will be budgeted same as 5 days? No chance. Have you ever met the upper class types who run the majority of companies... This is partial redundancy for everyone whitewashed as caring for your employees. It's just not apparent yet And compressed hours? Employees and employers just lying to themselves as it enables what both sides want
qwerty456127 2y ago
To me it seems (I'm not very serious, it just seems) the only real reason against 4-day workweeks everywhere are alcoholics. I knew too many people who woold spend whatever free time they get drinking booze, this way harming the society. We probably need a study on how numerous these are, also compared to those who would use extra spare time for any sort of good (including pure resting, education, friends/family etc).
- xandrius 2y ago
  Ridiculous, should we avoid vacations altogether as someone might end up drinking too much? Is that the way we decide how to set our society? Alcoholism is a different problem from workaholism.
Borg3 2y ago
Im not really understand that preasure for this. Imo its much more sane to reduce working day from 8 hours to 6 hours.. You then use 12 hrs day shifts and use 2x6 or either 4x6 only for critical stuff like medical, some specialized industries, etc.. Mon-Fri and weekend free sound just about good fit. Remember that you can always take a day off as well. Is scary that big cities never sleeps. People moan about depression, about lack of good sleep, wellbeing. Well, you created shitty environment for yourself...
nsonha 2y ago
so public services will be even less accessible to the rest of the people?
neycoda 2y ago
I mean, let's get rid of hourly wage. Make things fair for everyone. Value-based pricing.
djha-skin 2y ago
UBI in the 2010s, 4 10s in the late 2000s. These things never stick. 5 8s is a great compromise between employers and employees. Every time someone tries something different they decide they don't like it, either the employer or the employee. My employer hired me for 4 tens. I felt like a zombie during the week. I'd much rather have a few extra hours every day than a Friday to myself, especially since I need to go into the office on Friday's occasional anyways. I moved back to 5 8s.
- CapeTheory 2y ago
  The problem is that so many people being paid for 5x8 are actually working 5x9 or 5x10. At least for myself, I was raised with the notion that working harder would be recognised and eventually rewarded. That has not turned out to be the case, so I am seeking a rebalance.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  The argument against is, 5 day work week only started ~100 years ago. Growing up, I thought, as humanity we would automate as much as we can, and lower the work week as well. Didn’t think people will consider that as “failure or laziness”. The problem is, you can’t let the competitive market to make it happen, as your competition will eat you. The best thing you get is talent retention. But not the shareholder value or the products that you might be manufacturing.
- vips7L 2y ago
  To me it just sounds like you’re working too hard. I’d much rather have 4 10s because I’m not working the full day any way.
uhtred 2y ago
meanwhile in america: "you're taking time off work for a 1 week vacation this year? what are you, a commie?"
nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
Hope. Global diversity is collapsing in all the wrong ways. Hopefully they can repopulate their haplogroups and grow representation. Next we need to tackle over growth in other countries.
jac_no_k 2y ago
I hope this is successful but have a feeling that it's going to end up like Premium Friday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Friday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Friday Starts with big fanfare, supported by businesses, until focus drifts elsewhere and it quietly disappears.
throwaway2037 2y ago
Japan Times will surely be better than this drivel from CNN: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/04/japan/society/tokyo-four-day-work-week/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/04/japan/society/t...
polski-g 2y ago
This should only be offered to families with children.

704 points by amichail 2y ago

That sounds....huge. I know many working couples where one would probably take that in a heartbeat. You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge, not to mention clocking out early each day to be able to pick up your kid and not have to get back to work or whatever.

Heliosmaster 2y ago
Yep, completely agree. After having our kid both me and my wife work 80% so we have one extra day at home. Huge.
jajko 2y ago
Not sure about rest of the world, but here in Switzerland mothers often take Wednesdays off - first years of school its not on Wednesdays, and then it starts with just mornings. Wife has it and she repeatedly claimed that she will never go back to 5 days workweek. Most employers, be it private or state ones have 0 issues with this setup. 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway. What is gained is very well worth it, time with parents is crucial in many ways for small kids and if that window is missed you can't make it up later. Catching up with stuff like bureaucracy which is unavailable during weekends is possible only during such time. Its true that having kids fundamentally changed my view on wealth and how much should I pursue higher paychecks, life is darn short anyway and double that with kids. I am switching to 90% contract from 1.1.2025 - working usual 5 days a week but having altogether 48.5 MDs of paid vacation (90% of 25MDs I had on 100% + 0.5 MD per each week in year, our HR recipe). It feels like being a teacher but on corporate paycheck (and work intensity). Even with 4 mortgages (for 2 properties) and no family to help financially if we hit hardships, this was a nobrainer. Other aspect would be retiring in 60 (max 61), but that's too far down the line to care much about now. I am looking very much into spending that time on family and myself. One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races. For such benefits alone I don't care about higher paychecks, money only can get you so far in life.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jefbyokyie 2y ago
  > 20% less, maybe 15% net income less ain't that huge of a deal - if it is, something ain't right in your finances anyway or else, something maybe horribly broken in your country. I'm happy for you, that you can easily dismiss 15% net income. Try that in Hungary, where generally two full time jobs together are nearly insufficient just to stay afloat. > One needs to be happy or at least content with its own life to make others happy too, and thats not achievable easily in rat races Very true, which is why mental health issues are rampant in the Eastern Bloc.
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    Doesn't help that the average attitude of people here of mental health is that it doesn't exist. My family used to believe, adn they still do, that the only reason you'd go to psychiatrist is because you're "weird" and that only crazies who belong in mental hospital go there...
chachacharge 2y ago
I kind of doubt this will be adopted practically in Japan. The old people get time off and leave work early in Japan by privilege and the young break themselves and any rule they need to permit it. The young would even lie about taking time off to make the boss look good, even taking less pay to sell the lie. Who can have kids when you already have to change everyone's diaper.
- encoderer 2y ago
  Fascinating. Is the loyalty reciprocated?
  - wubrr 2y ago
    If the subordinates have to lie about taking time off, and intentionally accept lower pay for the benefit of their superiors - then no, it's definitely not reciprocated. I'd argue the subordinates are straight up being abused in this case.
    - l33tbro 2y ago
      I'm not saying you are wrong here, but I think it is important to ground all of these old:young dynamics in culture. 'Subordinate', to me, is a very western lens and looks past the crucial point that the Japanese view power structures with far more optimism than we do. Japan clearly has its own problems, but honour and duty play a significant part in their culture and, admirably, contributes to the creation of a high-trust society.
      - coliveira 2y ago
        Arguably, the Japanese view a society that takes care of the elderly with respect as a benefit to themselves. In the other hand, it is a characteristic of Western society to see every moment as an opportunity to make immediate profits, even at the expense of their own future.
        2y ago
cavisne 2y ago
The issue is in corporate jobs (including tech) Friday is a very relaxed day. If you are working a shorter week than everyone else, you end up doing the same amount of work in less time for less money.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  I did this a few years ago at a company I was a partner in. We had a busy season where folks did overtime. The expectation for salaried employees was a 4-day, 35 hour week, but during that 3-4 week period, it may surge more. 35 hour weeks used to be pretty common in a lot of businesses before the overtime rules were watered down.
- ghaff 2y ago
  My experience, especially post-COVID, is that meetings on Friday are discouraged and nobody blinks at noon departures. Etc. Not quite a four-day work week but came pretty close for a lot of folks.
- NoLinkToMe 2y ago
  Agreed, the Friday is essentially the day with the highest pay:effort ratio. It's a 20% salary for relatively little effort. And given a ratio of 80% spending and 20% saving, that Friday can be the difference between living paycheck-to-paycheck and early retirement. Essentially if you make 5k a month, spend 4k and invest 1k at an 8% ROI from age 25, you'll have: 180k, 570k and 1400k at age 35, 45 and 55 respectively. If you live off of 4% of that, you'll have a passive income of $0.6k, $1.9k and $4.6k respectively at the same ages. In other words working that relaxed Friday from age 25 and investing the proceeds, will get you to the point that you passively earn the same as you did working Monday through Thursday by age 52 or so, without working again. And that's true for any income, at those same ratios. For many tech jobs the salaries are so high that you can feasibly get to early retirement in your 30s. There's a lot to be said about the power of a 3-day weekend though. It's not just that you get an extra day of weekend, you also lose a day of work. Expressed as a ratio, is when it clicked for me: You go from 5:2 to 4:3, or in other words: 2.5 days of work for every 1 day of leisure -> 1.3 days of work for every 1 day of leisure. It's approximately twice as good a ratio. And you really feel it, you feel rested and refreshed. I'm still doing 5d a week. For me the holy grail is to find a company that does 36h contracts with fulltime pay, where you have a 4 day week every other week. All the benefits of full pay, the occasional relaxed friday, but also two long weekends each month allowing trips, hobbies, projects, rest etc.
colechristensen 2y ago
A long time ago when I was an intern at a defense contractor my boss was a woman who had worked her whole career 30 hours a week and was very happy about it, kept it up even when her kids were graduating high school. I also enjoyed the 9/80 schedule there, nominally 9 hour days with a little flexibility with every other Friday off for everyone.
blendo 2y ago
Prior to retirement, I cut back to 32 hrs/week at 80% pay (well, closer to 85% because I kept my full health). I backfilled the pay cut by beginning a small 401k withdrawl. All of a sudden, every Thursday evening felt like the start of vacation!
- ghaff 2y ago
  It sort of happened with me by default. Probably didn't take as much advantage as I should. And "retirement" is much less retirement than it could be.
EasyMark 2y ago
I worked out a 9hr/4 days week with my current company, I get more work done in those 36 hours than I did in the 40 hours before because I’m more relaxed after a long weekend and considerably happier
viraptor 2y ago
I took that option 4 years ago and wouldn't go back now. It's not worth the increase in money vs the life improvement.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  That's only because you have enough money. There's plenty of people who are still financially short after a 40h job.
znpy 2y ago
> You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge during my last job search i was thinking exactly the same. id' hapily give up the usual 10-15% pay rise i look for when hopping from one job to another, maybe even consider giving up a 5-15% in order to get a 4-days work week. I'm not rich by any means, but right now in my life "more money" don't appeal to me that much but more free time certainly does.
neycoda 2y ago
Too many people in the US are living paycheck to paycheck on hourly wages, many with two people in the household working full-time. This is becoming normal. A 4-day workweek will hurt them.
- dlmilli 2y ago
  [dead]
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  not if they get to work 4 days and get paid 5

MBCook 2y ago

I wish these stories would say if the hours are changing or not. 32 hours, 4 days a week seems better to me. But if all you do is take 40 hours and make it 10 hour days I’m not that much happier.

alienreborn 2y ago
I would still take 40 hrs in 4 days vs 5 days. Full extra day is a blessing.
Filligree 2y ago
It's Japan, so they alread have 10 if not 12 hour days, a lot of which isn't work in any sense. Cutting day out of the week also means removing the near-obligatory after-work 'socialising'.
FigurativeVoid 2y ago
I have had friends and family that work 4x10s or even 3x12s and they all vastly prefer the trade-off of more hours per work day for fewer days.
- MBCook 2y ago
  I’d still likely take the option, I just think it’s unnecessary. Productivity is ridiculously up since the 8 hour day was established, even since just two decades ago. Tasks expand to take up the available time, even if usefulness doesn’t. I suspect you’d see little loss in cutting down to 32/hr/week, and I suspect it would be more than made up for by the gains of giving people that extra day. So it may be a net positive. I guess my main concern is that a lot of companies (not speaking about Japan here, just the US) might decide to use four days a week as a way to make people crunch four days thinking that having three days off would make up for that. And things wouldn’t really be any better.
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    That's the unfortunate bit about salaries. If you took a 4x per week job, you'd usually get a 20% pay reduction; however, many jobs could be compressed to 4 days without any loss in productivity.

FigurativeVoid 2y ago

Clarifying point: this is the Tokyo local government not a national policy.

deleted 2y ago
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teractiveodular 2y ago
And even in Tokyo it only applies to metropolitan (roughly, state) workers, not the ward (roughly, city) governments. According to the data below, there's anywhere from 33k to 161k metropolitan employees depending on where you draw the line. https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2024/01/26/05.html https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2024/01...
- urthor 2y ago
  A very important clarification. Sounds like office workers only.

antisthenes 2y ago

Too little too late. It may have an impact on the next generation, in 10-20 years, if at all. Also, for government employees only...

mikestew 2y ago
The best time to plant a tree, and all… Surely your argument isn’t, “at this point, why bother to do anything?”
- antisthenes 2y ago
  > Surely your argument isn’t, “at this point, why bother to do anything?” Surely if the effort exceeds the value of the outcome, then it shouldn't be done?
  - kirubakaran 2y ago
    You haven't made an argument for that point at all
    - antisthenes 2y ago
      I haven't made an argument against it either. I merely estimated the realistic impact.

matt3210 2y ago

Better: work with families to alternate remote days so one parent stays home with the kids and no need for childcare service

Heliosmaster 2y ago
Do you really think that being remote is "staying home with the kids"? You're physically in the same building as them, but either you're not really working, or your kids don't actually need an adult to be there because they are grown up anyway, so no childcare is needed because they go to school.
writtenAnswer 2y ago
Many jobs might be in-person especially in Japan

hunglee2 2y ago

its got to help, but the main thing Japan needs to do is de-Toykoify the country. Urban density is probably the main causes for decline in fertility, and Tokyo is the worst example globally of runaway urban agglomeration.

tokioyoyo 2y ago
People choose to live in Tokyo. They tried to give a buttloads of incentives to move to the countryside, but few take them, because… city life is just easier, more convenient and more fun. But I still agree, it might affect it in a roundabout way. When you live in a city, you have more opportunities to do anything else other than having children. Also, Japan’s fertility rate isn’t that much lower than Canadas. They just got to the problem earlier than anyone else, so trying to resolve it with any possible means. The biggest problem still continues though — there’s no real reason or incentive to have more than 2 children, other than “for the good of the society”. And women are less likely to sacrifice bare minimum of 6 years of their lives to give birth to 3 children. Especially when they can do… literally anything else. Every educated girl friend of mine thinks exactly the same way as well. Some had a child or two, but more than that it’s just a burden to the couple. I’m obviously simplifying things, and once the third child is born, they’re loved and etc. But it’s going to be a very hard sell for anyone.
Hilift 2y ago
Depopulation resulted in an oversupply of nine million housing vacancies outside the cities. Tokyo pays people a million yen per child to move out of the city. It looks like the population plateaued about 10 years ago and is trending down slightly. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/21671/tokyo/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/21671/toky...

pamelafox 2y ago

Would schools and childcare providers also have 4-day workweeks? I really appreciate that I have 5 days of childcare now, as I find it exhausting to be 24/7 parenting two lil kids for two days straight (the weekends). If the norm was 4-day workweeks, I would pay my nanny overtime for Fridays. And then yes, maybe I'd get chores done on Friday! Currently, chores just don't get done ever. :D

pamelafox 2y ago
" It separately announced another policy that will allow parents with children in grades one to three in elementary schools to trade off a bit of their salary for the option to clock out early." This is really nice, this was the option that I wanted for my first kid. I would want this from the day they were born though, not just grades 1-3. It helps with breastfeeding scheduling.
sahila 2y ago
What about the nanny wanting a 4 day work week, and what if they have children of their own?
- pamelafox 2y ago
  Indeed! My nanny does have kids of her own. So I would either pay her overtime or I would find additional childcare for the 5th day. I'm just pointing this out because I hear "4 day workweek" talked about a lot, but it's never clear to me if folks mean that everyone is getting those 4 days, including childcare providers or teachers, and if that's actually what folks want. People in this thread talk about getting chores done, but I'm not getting any chores done if I'm taking care of my lil kids, I'm just getting an even messier house. :D

WillyWonkaJr 2y ago

Japan is forecast to still have 50 million people in 2120. I wouldn't call this a population crisis. With some rewilding it could be quite pleasant! I suspect companies are afraid of not growing, and governments are afraid to cut spending. Source: https://www.jcer.or.jp/english/new-population-projection-how-does-it-differ-from-the-old-one https://www.jcer.or.jp/english/new-population-projection-how...

jorblumesea 2y ago
It's not about the amount of people but your population pyramid. If your population halves, expect a lot of pain. Especially for the elderly.
- cableshaft 2y ago
  Especially for something like Social Security safety nets, which relies on a larger younger population paying into it. I'm not sure if Japan has an equivalent but I think they do.
  - WillyWonkaJr 2y ago
    This is a great argument for individual retirement accounts rather than using the young to pay for the elderly. In the United States, if everyone's social security tax were put in an index fund, then everyone would be millionaires upon retirement. There are solutions other than pleading with people to have more kids.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      The idea behind OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance), more commonly known as Social Security, is not that you retire a millionaire. It's the US government saying "since we are a wealthy nation, we will not let you spend your elderly years destitute." That's it. That's literally all it is. It was meant to keep grandpa from being a burden on his family when he was too old to work, which in the 1930s meant when you were too old to do actual physical labor. Since then the American public has seen it as a nice little bonus they get for living past 65 and has started stealing from younger generations in the form of sovereign debt in order to maintain that instead of treating it like the insurance policy it actually is.

reverendsteveii 2y ago

I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.

Spivak 2y ago
And treat parenting as something other than a passion project you work on nights and weekends.
nkzd 2y ago
I am not sure about this one. In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.
- bbqfog 2y ago
  Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!
  - Asraelite 2y ago
    Try asking that after spending a while living in a tenement building with 3 people per room and frequent outbreaks of dysentery and smallpox.
    - bbqfog 2y ago
      People still live like this today.
      - cowgoesmoo 2y ago
        extremely rare in countries with falling birth rates
  - 2y ago

Barrin92 2y ago

>Many sociologists attribute the ever-plunging birth rates to Japan’s unforgiving work culture and rising costs of living. It still seems like an incredibly odd argument to me given that the birth rate is only marginally lower than in the most generous, least working European nations. Hungary spent 5%(!) of its GDP on direct family support and it did very little (raised the birth rate by 0.15 give or take). I wonder when people will just acknowledge that most of the secular decline of 1-2 children is simply down to personal choice, family planning, education and financial freedom. (and adjust economic policies accordingly)

MobiusHorizons 2y ago
> adjust economic policies accordingly What do you have in mind? My understanding is that this is not something there is much of an economic solution for short of canceling benefits (pensions / medical care)
- standardUser 2y ago
  Immigration solves the issue entirely. Maybe not perpetually, but for the foreseeable future.
- Barrin92 2y ago
  Pension reform is unpopular but will need to happen in developed economies at some point or otherwise the youth that remains will completely crash out. One positive of the population pyramid is that the small next generations stand to inherit quite a lot softening it to some extent. But it's necessary. Not enough discussed is also how much potential for labour saving tech there is. The most 20 common jobs almost haven't changed in decades. Retail, transport, clerks, back office, admin, even without magic "AI" solutions, if we wanted to we could design work around drastically cutting labour already. It's actually one benefit of the demographics, a lot of automation isn't happening because manual labour is cheap in a lot of places, so there's potential for growth even.
Aeolun 2y ago
The policies that make schooling and childcare free in Japan are very nice. The problem is that it doesn’t move the needle. At least in Tokyo it’s more or less impossible to not have two working parents and own a house. Outside of Tokyo, you might own a house, but there’s no jobs and everyone around you is 60+

lordleft 2y ago

I think this is an overall good move, and very much support it, but many countries with better work-life balance and robust support for new parents still see declining birth rates....I can't help but think that a decline in fertility rates is as much about values -- what the point of life itself is, and how much it should be bound up in what we call the family -- as it is about the material conditions surrounding the act of child-rearing.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with you that values are more impactful, but personally I think it’s very difficult/nearly impossible to intentionally steer a culture’s values. Do you think there is anything procedural/structural that could be impactful for declining birth rates?
makeitdouble 2y ago
We'd totally be OK with "mistakenly" improving work/like balance and then earnestly try to find other solutions to the birth rate problem. Otherwise I don't think there's a single unique solution. No having a miserable life is probably a good firth step that enables more advanced and varied measures.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Nickersf 2y ago

I don't think it will boost the fertility rate in any significant way. I think the only way to really make a dent in low fertility rates is to incentivize mothers to stay at home and men to work full-time at least for the first five years of a child's life. I know people disagree with this, but it's worth considering if the declining birth rates are a major concern for the State.

pamelafox 2y ago
I'm curious if you have tried taking care of a young child 24/7, it is exhausting work. Some mothers are able to do it, but I find it really helps to be able to alternate between childcare and work, to give me a break. I do think that remote work is great for mothers though, as it makes pumping/nursing more doable, whether we are working or not. Perhaps the government can provide more subsidies for quality childcare.
- helsinki 2y ago
  Just get divorced and only spend a few days per week with your kid. Honestly, it's pretty good.
standardUser 2y ago
A better policy would be to incentivize any parent to stay home for the first few years. Restricting it to mothers would only reduce the appeal of the policy and result in fewer takers, so why default to a more restrictive approach?

wwwlouishinofun 2y ago

The pleasure of sexual activity is not strongly linked to pregnancy. This kind of human intervention was unexpected in the evolution of nature.

Aeolun 2y ago

As much as I enjoy the concept, it’s already nearly impossible to get any goverment work done in Japan without taking a day off yourself. Everything government is open 9 to 5 and no more. It’d be more exciting if this was basically anywhere else, but I guess we have to start somewhere.

barbazoo 2y ago
Hopefully the workers don't all take off the same day and the company backfills the hours with new 4 days/week workers.

jonny_eh 2y ago

Is this the largest test/rollout of a 4 day work week ever?

jmward01 2y ago

This focuses on fertility, but the bigger deal here is it creates jobs. Because when you reduce the availability of labor you create more jobs and spur the economy. Not only will more people have jobs, but they will have more time to spend money. So this is potentially a win for the local economy.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago
If they’re just reshuffling the existing work to a larger pool of people, do you really improve the economy? If anything I’d expect efficiency to decrease?
orangecat 2y ago
This is a variant of the broken window fallacy. Paying more in labor for the same amount of output is not good for the economy.
- jmward01 2y ago
  This isn't destroying anything so I'm not sure why you say this has anything to do with the broken window fallacy or why this could be bad for the economy. Since there is confusion here, I'll pose this as a different thought experiment to make my points more clear: If it isn't good for the economy to reduce the average hours per worker then does that mean it is good for the economy to increase them? If we reduce the free-time of people then they will have even less time to spend their money and consume goods. Arguably they would also have less incentive to care about free-time activities that they can only, at best, sample. The basic question I am raising is why is 5 days of 8 hours magically the right number. I'd argue that the more free time people have the more chance to consume they have. We balance that with the need to produce though. So an optimum point is actually driven by efficiency. The more efficient we are the more we should be diverting to free-time in order to drive more demand for the the. efficient goods we are producing. In a world where we are infinitely efficient then 100% of time should be spent in free-time in order to consume the most goods produced by that infinite efficiency. We aren't there yet so we still need to balance production against free-time but we are more efficient than we were 20 years ago so we should be finding ways to give back free-time to drive up demand.

deleted 2y ago

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mclau156 2y ago

The idea of working 5 days a week began when an extra day of working meant you could manufacture an extra 100 cars, workload in the Tokyo government is not going to suffer much output at all if any by going to working 4 days a week

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

So… five days? Maybe government work is different from private industry work, but the folks at my company worked six days a week, with Saturday being a “half day” (only 8 hours). However, Saturday wasn’t an “official” office day, so casual attire was allowed, and the A/C was often turned off. I hated going in on Saturdays.

dfxm12 2y ago

Shorter hours for less pay feels like a trap for salaried workers, unless your duties are also very formally lessened. I know people who have been granted similar schedules, but their managers simply expected them to get the same amount of work done, but in less time, for less pay.

agnishom 2y ago
I agree. If I made 20% less money and worked 20% less at my main job, I would still need to make up for that 20% of my income. That could be a difficult position to be in.

agnishom 2y ago

Surprisingly progressive policy. I know this is mostly tangential, but I think that this should be the way humanity should benefit from technology. Better technology shouldn't just exist to make capitalists richer, but it should exist to make everyone richer. One of the most important ways you can be richer is to have more time.

icandoit 2y ago

for parents only?

camgunz 2y ago

Guys if this is happening in Tokyo of all places, no one else has any excuse.

zombiwoof 2y ago

Elon Musk is pissed

dukeofdoom 2y ago

Ai should run government

joemazerino 2y ago

Government employees need to work more, not less.

makeitdouble 2y ago

For context, while Japan has a reputation of a shitty place for work culture, a lot has changed. Not everything, but many more companies will allow for flexible hours for instance, full remote has stayed in many places, and more traditional place usually allow one or two days or remoting every week. There is a communal sense that growth is basically gone and better conditions are negotiable. Newer companies have been offering better conditions and older companies are having to compete and follow up to some point. This initiative is following that trend. Schools are facing the same "adapt or get shunned" situation where just nobody wants to be a teacher and family/friends will actively try to stop someone from going there. So things are changing.

gretch 2y ago
Why is it bad to be a teacher in Japan?
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  To put it mildly, it's a shitty job. I don't think it's an easy job in most countries, but in Japan in particular the pay is low, hours are long and the expected work load is super heavy as it includes endless meetings, paperwork, watching extracurricular activities often including on weekends, seasonal events etc. Some still enjoy it as a vocation, but on paper it's just mind crushing. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3580/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/3580/
  - gretch 2y ago
    Thanks, I didn’t know that about Japan

AdrianB1 2y ago

Governments destroyed the notion of family. Now they want kids. Nobody sees the contradiction?

warkdarrior 2y ago
How did the Japanese government destroy the notion of family?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

insane_dreamer 2y ago

OK, but are they going to take that time off? I mean technically they have 5 day work weeks now, but Japanese "salarymen" are notorious for working 80 hours weeks. (Though maybe this isn't the case for government workers) Just getting people down to working 40 hours / week would be a huge improvement in QOL.

urthor 2y ago

How does this even work in Japan after this change. There's so many stories of corporate overwork. Does the entire country just desperately want to work for the government?

DriverDaily 2y ago
I guess only Nixon could go to China? When the US government adopts an employment policy private companies usually follow. Either because they do business with the government and have to comply, or it affects so many people there's a shift in norms.

exabrial 2y ago

In the USA, make it zero days. Same amount of work would get done by the government, and people would realize what a waste it is.

lazylizard 2y ago

raising a kid to 18 costs how much? stopping a career and foregoing 18 years of promotions cost how much? governments are just mucking about with the garnishings and ignoring the meat of the matter. but then maybe they cant afford it, either. hah.

option 2y ago

Sounds like Tokyo has too many government employees.

mhb 2y ago

Wow. So three or four more days than US federal workers!

752963e64 2y ago

[dead]

ein0p 2y ago

Meh. Per some recent reports a significant fraction of government employees in the US already enjoys zero day work weeks, fully paid, and has enjoyed them for years.

feverzsj 2y ago

For government employees only. That's why Japanese call these people tax thieves.

switch007 2y ago

We're firmly in the "4 days but no change to pay" honeymoon phase. Do people really think new 4 day roles, if it becomes the norm, will be budgeted same as 5 days? No chance. Have you ever met the upper class types who run the majority of companies... This is partial redundancy for everyone whitewashed as caring for your employees. It's just not apparent yet And compressed hours? Employees and employers just lying to themselves as it enables what both sides want

qwerty456127 2y ago

To me it seems (I'm not very serious, it just seems) the only real reason against 4-day workweeks everywhere are alcoholics. I knew too many people who woold spend whatever free time they get drinking booze, this way harming the society. We probably need a study on how numerous these are, also compared to those who would use extra spare time for any sort of good (including pure resting, education, friends/family etc).

xandrius 2y ago
Ridiculous, should we avoid vacations altogether as someone might end up drinking too much? Is that the way we decide how to set our society? Alcoholism is a different problem from workaholism.

Borg3 2y ago

Im not really understand that preasure for this. Imo its much more sane to reduce working day from 8 hours to 6 hours.. You then use 12 hrs day shifts and use 2x6 or either 4x6 only for critical stuff like medical, some specialized industries, etc.. Mon-Fri and weekend free sound just about good fit. Remember that you can always take a day off as well. Is scary that big cities never sleeps. People moan about depression, about lack of good sleep, wellbeing. Well, you created shitty environment for yourself...

nsonha 2y ago

so public services will be even less accessible to the rest of the people?

neycoda 2y ago

I mean, let's get rid of hourly wage. Make things fair for everyone. Value-based pricing.

djha-skin 2y ago

UBI in the 2010s, 4 10s in the late 2000s. These things never stick. 5 8s is a great compromise between employers and employees. Every time someone tries something different they decide they don't like it, either the employer or the employee. My employer hired me for 4 tens. I felt like a zombie during the week. I'd much rather have a few extra hours every day than a Friday to myself, especially since I need to go into the office on Friday's occasional anyways. I moved back to 5 8s.

CapeTheory 2y ago
The problem is that so many people being paid for 5x8 are actually working 5x9 or 5x10. At least for myself, I was raised with the notion that working harder would be recognised and eventually rewarded. That has not turned out to be the case, so I am seeking a rebalance.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
The argument against is, 5 day work week only started ~100 years ago. Growing up, I thought, as humanity we would automate as much as we can, and lower the work week as well. Didn’t think people will consider that as “failure or laziness”. The problem is, you can’t let the competitive market to make it happen, as your competition will eat you. The best thing you get is talent retention. But not the shareholder value or the products that you might be manufacturing.
vips7L 2y ago
To me it just sounds like you’re working too hard. I’d much rather have 4 10s because I’m not working the full day any way.

uhtred 2y ago

meanwhile in america: "you're taking time off work for a 1 week vacation this year? what are you, a commie?"

nobodywillobsrv 2y ago

Hope. Global diversity is collapsing in all the wrong ways. Hopefully they can repopulate their haplogroups and grow representation. Next we need to tackle over growth in other countries.

jac_no_k 2y ago

I hope this is successful but have a feeling that it's going to end up like Premium Friday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Friday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Friday Starts with big fanfare, supported by businesses, until focus drifts elsewhere and it quietly disappears.

throwaway2037 2y ago

Japan Times will surely be better than this drivel from CNN: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/04/japan/society/tokyo-four-day-work-week/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/04/japan/society/t...

polski-g 2y ago

This should only be offered to families with children.