One good thing we might get out of this pandemic: a permanent three-day weekend.
Hours worked in Australia have taken a big step down, as the following graph shows. That is unlikely to snap back easily, as the most recent fall in average hours worked simply extends a pattern that has been in place for some time.
The above graph shows that the fall in work hours has been in place since 2008. I went looking for evidence of what was happening prior to 2008. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has data back to 1991, and it shows hours worked were also falling steadily from 1991 to 2008. This is a long-term thing.
In Australia, the annual average hours worked have fallen from 34.4 to 31.7 since 1991, as the above graph shows. That’s a reduction of 2.7 hours over three decades.
Because the fall in work hours in the pandemic builds on a pre-existing pattern, it is highly unlikely to bounce back. Full-time, five-day-a-week work is likely to eventually become a minority pursuit, and three day weekends could be the norm.
But perceiving five days a week, eight hours a day as the norm? That’s merely a result of our position in history. In the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution, workers were putting in 60-80 hour weeks. One of the triumphs of economic growth has been to allow us to feed and clothe ourselves with much less work.
As the next chart shows, working hours of full-time workers fell across the developed world last century (and have fallen more since).
Is working long hours natural? Anthropologists offer us a surprising answer. When humans moved from hunting to agriculture, leisure time plummeted. Any number of studies suggest hunter gatherers did surprisingly little work. Perhaps just three hours a day. Foraging for nuts and berries was easy!
While agriculture might have given us more ability to trade and more chance of surpluses, it came at great cost. We began to work more. The so-called protestant work ethic drew on this agricultural tradition, and back-breaking labour peaked in the industrial revolution when factory owners had great power. It has been ebbing since.
In Australia, the number of people working mega weeks of 70 hours plus has fallen markedly in the last three decades, despite a rapidly growing work force. We are now working far more sociable hours.
And sociable working hours are getting even more sociable. As the next graph shows, the 35- to 39-hour work week is now Australia’s most common kind of week. This shows that the fall in average hours worked is not just about the rise of part-time hours. It is also about gentler full-time loads. Meanwhile, even shorter weeks are becoming more mainstream fast.
(Unlike the achievement of the 40 hour week by the union movement in 1856, this milestone has passed unremarked.)
How did people work such long hours in the past? A clue might be found in the slogan for the labour movement’s eight-hour day: eight hours work, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.
Look closely at that formulation. Where’s cooking? Where’s child-minding? What about cleaning? The men (and boys) who worked 16-hour days in the factories were almost certainly being cared for at home by women.
Part of the reason for shrinking work weeks is that when we count labour hours, we primarily count paid labour. Labour in the home gets short shrift in the statistics. So when we talk about a four-day week becoming the norm it is important to remember that’s four days of paid work. It doesn’t mean sitting around all weekend without lifting a finger!
Productivity
France brought in a 35-hour work week in the year 2000. It remains one of the richest countries in Europe.
The four-day paid workweek that I believe is both inevitable and desirable is made possible by our high productivity. As the next graph shows, richer countries generally work less. This is counter-intuitive but true.
What’s interesting is the dispersion at the right hand side. When you’re poorer you have no choice but to work hard. As you get richer, you retain the choice to work long hours. Most European countries have chosen not to, and the richer they are (hi Germany) the more they’ve chosen leisure.
The pandemic will speed progress in lots of ways that were already happening, Things like working from home, adoption of new communication tools. Not to mention the transition in global geopolitical dynamics and the demise of public transport.
We can add hours worked to the mix. It won’t be long until, like France, we say au revoir to the traditional working week. Bring on the three-day weekend!
What do you think about the changing work week? Should Australia adopt a four-day work week? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section
Jason, a good piece but most of the data is rubbish/meaningless because it clearly and wrongly is based on a definition of work as only ‘paid work’. As any mother will tell you this definition is crap. Here, have a listen to an expert, Prof Folbre: https://youtu.be/I6xNW6K_RG0
That is a separate but related issue to the duration of the work week for wage labour. Murphy comments on it over several paragraphs, ending with an urging for us all to help with housework, prompting me to hang out some laundry.
I don’t get why you’d say he ignores this.
Did it rain immediately after you hung the laundry out Draco?!
Perfect drying weather up here thankfully
Because if you look at time use surveys you find the exact opposite, people’s market economy ‘work’ hours has increased, not decreased. ABS data doesn’t include unpaid overtime etc. And if you look at households, instead of individuals, you’ll find far far less ‘leisure’ time (mostly due to women and some men) doing tewo jobs — the housework & childcare, elderly care etc AND a paid job. My understanding of the data from the list time use survey is that mens leisure time slightly increased but this is greatly outweighed by the decrease in women’s leisure time and their increase in working hours, something feminists ought to be shouting about.
The ABS no longer does time use surveys exactly because the government (Labor or Liberal alike) doesn’t want the data available showing the massive increase labour burden for families. Its just like official unemployment data, so misleading now even the government is not using it.
Further, the evidence from Norway where they have introduced a requiremernt for men to take at least 3 months of paid parental leave (of a family total of 12 months, or lose it. ..effectively reducing the mother’s leave by 3 months) is that when the men take that leave the mother goes to paid employment and yet still does the bulk of the housework! The men do a bit of childcare, but it’s alot of holiday. So a 3 day weekend sure, but don’t expect the gender impact will be neutral.
I note, Draco, you refer to ‘help with the housework’. That says it all. Isn’t the housework mens’ responsibility, or do they just help….the wife?
Again, not sure why you want to move the goalposts from leisure time increasing and not that hours of wage and salary labour are trending down. (and that this means we should shorten the work week)
This is precisely what I meant, you don’t free women automatically from the presumption that they keep the house in order from reducing full time work to 32 hours. But fixing that does nothing to address the 40 hour week being an unreachable luxury for many workers, while we have too many people looking for work that isn’t there, and still others working overtime. Maybe you have some payment in mind, but would that address the fundamental problem being discussed?
You do get less poverty or less neccessary wage labour time for women with a 32 hour full time work week though.
As for your remark about my contribution to housework, yes, I don’t do enough as I should. I only point out my fellow Jason made me feel bad about that, and rightly so.
Its because leasure time is a far better measure of the impact of work on individuals. Time use surveys generally break up the day as ‘personal care’ (sleeping, eating, toileting etc), contract and other work, and leisure.
Most, but not all, productivity measures do not count hours of labour, its usually just per worker. Its one of the reasons lazy economists and politicans (Labor& Liberal) are so keen to increase female participation rates in the paid work force– it falsely boosts the productivity and output numbers without counting the additional hours worked.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a 4 day paid working week, i just think the numbers presented here paint a very false picture of what has really been happening. ….ditto for unemployment data.
And, Draco, it was Jason who referred to ‘help with the housework’, not you. So, my dig, if there was one, was more directed at him!
Not bad Jason but you ought to have mentioned some history from circa 1970.
Incomes were not great from the period 1950-1970 but the majority of the population was comfortable. Most families had a car, TV and an annual holiday if only for a week. The statutory annual holiday was 10 working days in most first world countries. For Europe and most of the English speaking world labour strikes from the mid 60s onward became common; motivated by (in the main) a puerile comprehension of Marxist economic thought by disruptive trade unionists. Nevertheless, from circa the late 50s until the early 70s one could decide to leave a job and obtain another job within 24 or 48 hours. From the mid 70s such “opportunities” became less frequent; i.e. the labour market was becoming tighter for varying reasons.
From the early 80s the situation had changed entirely. A government in Australia lost an election (inter alia) in a context where unemployment was increasing and was regarded as a big deal. Similarly for New Zealand and Britain. Yet between 1948 and 1973 productivity increased by a surprising 97% and real wages (nominal wage / price level) increased by 91%. Yes, the capitalists got a benefit (or in Marxist terms – a surplus) but so did everyone else. Yet, with the advent of globalisation, advocated in management and economic journals by a school termed “Neo Liberal” (or Neo Lib) the phenomenon of globalisation became paramount.
Nation States actually lost their influence over domestic affairs. The politics as a wash with (so called) Supply Side economic theory which, roughly, discouraged any economic role for governments (save as consumers) and advocated the virtues of the market. From the early 70s (allowing for substantial increases in the price of energy) to 2015 productivity increased a further 73% while real wages increased 11%
The forgoing amounts to context but the last sentence is the point and references are available upon request. The adoption of a three day week is entirely (economically) feasible based upon productivity alone. To date the productivity has been appropriated or rather a substantial proportion of the productivity has been appropriated.
As to Mark, even Obama displaced the myth of the “self made man” during his second election campaign but with all due respect the matter of unpaid (domestic) work is beside the point. Ergo, it doesn’t follow, as you insist, that the data presented is “meaningless or rubbish”.
Lowering the work week is well overdue. We should all have more days off than on by now.
Apart from the various benefits to more free time it would require more workers, someone has to be there to keep the lights on unless the whole business wants to have a 3 day weekend. So for less work you get a lot of people off the dole.
I work part time but have modest needs to suit. On jobkeeper I am receiving a full time min wage instead of my usual amount. It is real good and I wish you all were living this dream. 32 hours work for what is currently 40 hours pay.
The social effects could be most positive but given the research into (especially English speaking) first world countries there seems to be increased drug use (and dependence) along with unsatisfactory issues such as D.V. even in countries as ‘enlightened’ as France.
As a sample of one, the lock-down meant nothing to me but others had all matter of anxieties. Absent from community education is the constructive use of leisure time.
Oh for sure, but economy-wide this change means you’d get many of the unemployed who are currently bonging on and/or beating their wife out of the house more, because the workforce would need to expand to suit the new definition of full time.
On a more serious note, figuring out how to spend your free time is hard and not everyone is used to it. Plenty of retirees go nuts trying to fill their day. Big theme of any fiction containing immortals too. But it is only 8 more hours, I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.
As a young person I would love to work less hours – especially aknowledging the importance of decreasing consumption to sustainability – but I feel compelled to work long hours due to rising housing prices. My friends who I’ve talked about this with feel the same way