If Productivity Keeps Increasing, Why Are We Still Working So Many Hours?

Factual Questions
1

If technological advances enable us to become more productive every year- by producing more goods and services with the same amount of labor, or by requiring fewer man-hours to produce the exact same amount of goods and services- then why do we continue to work the same amount of hours, year after year?

I understand that the rate of productivity growth in the U.S. averages about 3%. If productivity grows at a rate of 3% per annum, then, by my calculations, we could be cutting the amount of hours we need to work in half every 24 years, and we would still produce the same amount per capita. Yet we continue to work 40-hour weeks, just like we were doing back in 1938, when the 40-hour workweek was instated. Couldn’t we maintain the same standard of living as we did in 1938 by working 6-hour workweeks today? Why don’t we??

Why is it that we prefer to own more crap, rather than have more leisure time to ourselves?

Thanks.

2

Main reason? Because no one wants the same standard of living they had in 1938. Think for a minute about what the average household consumes in goods and services in 1 year now… vs. the consumption in 1938.
As long as people continue to want more “things”*, increased efficiency will only result in greater production and lower prices, not fewer hours of work. Theoretically, if the production of goods and services exceeded the demand** of the world’s people, then working hours would be reduced. Unfortunately, its probably more likely that jobs would be cut, rather then the standard work week shortened.

-Pandora

*“things” here includes both goods and services
** demand at the lowest feasible selling price.

3

One of your asumptions is wrong. That is the assumption that we wish to maintain the same standard of living as people had in the 1930’s. Your question is a good one but it fails to realize that we have chanelled most of our productivity increases into a higher material and services consumption instead of decreased work hours. Even the poor today routinely buy luxuries that only the wealthy could afford generations ago. The phrase “to put food on the table” used to have real meaning. Today, almost no one is in danger of truly starving in the U.S. Even the poor, not to mention the middle class, have access to a dizzying array of electronics and other gadgets. The poor might have to settle for a used TV but they still have a TV and probably a VCR, microwave etc.

4

Thanks.

So are you guys saying that we will still be working 40+ hours every week in the year 2050? How about 2550??

At what point will we decide that these so-called ‘improvements’ in our standard of living aren’t worth the amount of time they take from our lives?

5

[IMHO only]
You can invest your personal time to earn money (working in a job). You can invest personal money to buy back time (holidays, payiing others for services etc…). or use it to buy more consumer goods. There is a balance to be found and it will be difference for everyone depending on what is valued more. I do think (from personal experience) the amount of hours worked has dropped over the past few decades (no cites though).

I don’t work weekends anymore. I leave early on Fridays now too. I get more bank holidays and special-closure days at work. And of course paid holidays are the norm now. I get more money for less invested time.

The trend seems to be to cut back on hours worked, certainly in the office professional type professions. This could even lead to increased productivity in certain cases. (less stress related illnesses etc…)

As for working a 40+ hour week in the future. I guess those who wish to will do, those who don’t can get by with less and give themselves more free time. It’s a personal choice at the end of the day.
[/IMHO ends]

6

You try going to an old rust belt state and preaching that gospel. Don’t worry about what you’ll wear. They’ll have plenty of tar and feathers for you.

7

I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that part of the problem is that we are competing with eachother.

For example, the greatest fixed expense in my household (by far) is the mortgage payment. Of course the mortgage payment is roughly proportional to the amount we paid for our house, which is dictated by the market. IMHO, housing markets are bid up by people who are willing to work 40 hours a week or more.

If everyone worked only 30 hours a week, houses (and apartments) would be less expensive, it seems to me.

8

Part of the answer depends on what you mean by “we.” If you mean the USA, the answers are most likely “yes,” and “Yesterday for some of us, never for others.”
In some other countries, people are not working 40+ hpw now, and they regard a month’s vacation per year as meager. In the US, a lot of people, especially young people getting established, are willing to work as long as necessary to advance themselves, buy a McMansion, and gain the other things they consider important for themselves. And of course as long as there are some people willing to do so, the others will need to go along with it or be replaced by those who will.
I don’t mean this as a criticism of either group, just IMHO the way it is. There are those who decide, quite logically, that they will not sacrifice their family or personal time by working overtime, for example, but you can’t get away from whatever the permitted vacation and normal work hours are.

9

By the way, I believe that I read a few years back that there is a political movement afoot in certain European countries (France springs to mind) to render work weeks longer than 4 days illegal.
I have no idea what became of it.

10

By the way, the Economist magazine has an article on this. It appears that the 35 hour work week is now law in France, and became such sometime in the year 2000, unless it got repealed.

Registration or subscription may be required, I can’t tell if it is or not for this article.

11

Read “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” by James Gleick. It’ll really make you stop and think about how you spend your time and why.

12

Right, but that might be because we’re all more poor.

If I produce $1/hour of profit (for myself) and I work eight hours a day, then I’m making $8/day. If I double my productivity, I can work the same amount of hours and earn $16/day or I can halve my work hours and make the same amount as before (or I can do something else).

The question of how many hours to work will now depend on the relative values of my free time and my work time. Each hour I work is now worth $2 to me, but it costs the same as before in terms of effort. So I should be willing to work more by that calculation. However, IIRC and I don’t have a cite for this off-hand, empirical studies have found that people are fairly consistent in valuing their free time as being worth about half their wages. So if I’m making $1/hour and increase it to $2/hour, does the value of my free time increase from $0.50/hour to $1/hour? Maybe, as my income increases the range of activities I can engage in increases, and presumably the value of them as well. Before I could watch my black-and-white television and now I can watch my color television. Before I had to go to the library, now I can go to the movies. Before I had to eat plain white rice, now I can eat at the Ritz.

So to answer why we keep working the same hours despite increasing productivity, we need to figure out how these values interact and change over time.

But first we should ask ourselves if we really are working the same number of hours. I just went to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and since I can’t link to the output results, follow these steps. Go to the most requested series page. Check the box labeled “Average Weekly Hours (Unadjusted) - EEU00500005” and click Retrieve Data. Under Change Output Options, use the pull down menu to start the data in the '40s, let’s say 1947. Be sure to click the box labeled “Include Graphs NEW!” and then click go. Now look at the graph. It looks like hours fell pretty steadily from '64 to '84 (damn you, Reagan!) and have held steady since then. So we have cut back, but not a lot. I suspect it’s because our free time options have improved over that period as well, but I have no proof.

Finally, you have to consider institutional options. Basically, you can’t get ahead in life without working 40 hours or more on your job. The Man demands forty hours out of us. Personally, I’d like it if some enlightened legislators lowered full employment from 40 hours per week to 30. Forty hours may be an equilibrium because it is difficult to change to another number of hours. So social inertia may have something to do with why we keep the 40 hour week.

Summing up this long-winded non-answer, I think that it is a suprisingly hard question to answer. I don’t know, but I hope I’ve pointed a path that may help.

13

PBS had a special a while back, where they were discussing the differences between life in the United States and Europe. The point was made that the “wealth” created by the post-WWII industrial boom was taken in the US as material goods, and in Europe as leisure time. The examples were the American fascination with large autos, tvs, homes, etc., v. the Eurpoean mandated 4 weeks of vacation, less than 40 hour work week, etc. Made me want to move to Italy.

14

Oooh. That might be my first simulpost. Nifty.

15

Thanks.

I checked your link, js_africanus, but I think that graph only reflects the average number of hours worked each week per worker, not per household. I don’t think nearly as many women were working outside of the home in 1947 as they are today.

Once you consider this, it appears that Americans aren’t working fewer hours, even though they could be.

16

I believe we also work a shorter percentage or our lifetimes, i.e. we have longer retirements than they did in the 1930s.

17

Two thoughts to add to the OP and subsequent posts, on the question of “we” and who that might mean.

  1. The working poor and middle-type classes got a break with the labor movement, but backsliding started in the 50s and now many are over-worked or must work two jobs.

  2. In my personal experience in corporate America, lots of people spend an AMAZING amount of time screwing around. Some people shut their corner office door and work work work… others, send well-timed emails throughout the day to give that illusion.

18

“We” as a society will never decide this, but certainly individuals often make the decision to forego ‘improvements’ so they can have more time for themselves and/or their families.

Another incentive for your basic full time work week is benefits.

19

Interesting observation. I know my dad has talked about starting out at Fisher Body and if the day started at 7 am, everybody started working at 7 am, not merely showing up, and there was no screwing around like there is nowadays.

Good point, Surreal. If similar amounts of housework are being done, and if women are entering the workforce, then presumably hours per worker could go down with hours per household going up.

20

Again, there are a lot of variables. More women ARE working, but a lot of them believe they need to work in order to maintain the family standard of living. Of course that standard is a LOT higher than your typical 1950s standard. I knew a woman who cried every day at having to leave her baby at day care while she came to work. She had a husband in a management position making dam good money, a very large home, new cars etc. They went on a skiing vacation in the winter and a beach vacation in the summer. She believed she HAD to work, but she could have stayed home with her children as she said she wanted to, if she did without some of the luxuries for a while.

If “productivity” is measured by number of hours worked, this can also be misleading. As several have pointed out, in some jobs, one can be “at work” for 8 hours and actually producing something for about half of them. OTOH, somebody on the assembly line is most likely doing real work for virtually all of the time she’s punched the clock for. A further complication is that once you get past a certain number of hours in a work day, your real productivity decreases. The work done in the 8th hour and beyond is less in both quantity and quality than that in your first & second hour. In work that requires you to think or figure things out, if you work 3 hours extra in a day you will spend 6 more hours sometime later fixing the mistakes you made while tired.