REDUCTION IN WORKING HOURS
Will we only work 15 hours in 2030?
The topic of reducing working hours is celebrating a renaissance. In a century, we would not have to work more than 15 hours a week, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted back in 1930. Was he wrong - or is he right?
Joseph Gepp
May 27, 2023, 12:00
The essay written by the British economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930 is a slim seven pages long and was to become one of the most influential texts in economics. In "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," Keynes predicted that in about a hundred years, thanks to economic advancement and progress, we will hardly need to work at all. Specifically, three hours a day or 15 hours a week would be enough, Keynes wrote. By 2030, he said, people's main concern will be "filling leisure time."
By now, the century has almost passed. Keynes, it seems, was radically wrong. At least there is no trace of a 15-hour week far and wide.
The healthy full-time
Nevertheless, the topic of reducing working hours is currently celebrating a renaissance in Austria. The idea has moved up the political agenda, among other things since SPÖ presidential candidate Andreas Babler brought up the idea of a 32-hour week with full wage compensation. In Salzburg, too, the KPÖ campaigned for a reduction in working hours before the last regional election in April - and scored a historic success.
The Chamber of Labor (AK) has been advocating a "new, healthy full-time" for some time, as it puts it, and points to a survey according to which 82 percent of the population would like fewer hours per week. Even if parts of the employers' association are strongly opposed - the Federation of Austrian Industry (IV), for example, warns against "downright absurd" proposals in view of a "massive shortage of labor and skilled workers" - the issue is on the table.
Reason enough to ask: What became of Keynes' 1930 prophecy? The world, it seems, has not turned out at all as he thought. Why not? Initially, it seemed as if things were going in exactly the direction Keynes had in mind. In Austria, as in other Western countries, working hours became successively shorter. In this country, for example, the statutory working week fell from 48 to 45 hours in 1959; from 45 to 43 hours in 1970; from 43 to 40 hours in 1975. But that was the end of it, by and large. Later, many collective agreements went down a bit, to 38.5 hours per week. But the trend toward shorter working hours across the board was broken. And this has been the case for almost five decades.
Trend broken
So what has happened? Where did the national economy veer off the path that the economist Keynes had foreseen?
If you want to understand, you have to dig through Statistics Austria's figures. It collects the so-called labor volume: the total number of all hours worked in Austria per year. In 2022, this amounted to around 7.2 billion hours.
The amazing thing about this figure is that it has hardly changed in recent decades. Five years ago, it was about the same as it is today; five years ago, it was slightly lower, at just under seven billion hours. If the volume of work in 1995, the year of Austria's accession to the EU, were set at 100, we would be at just 114 today (see chart). In other words, we are hardly working any more than we did decades ago.
Reducing working hours as a reality
However, this stagnating volume of work contrasts with other developments that are more dynamic. First of all, there is the total number of jobs in the country, in other words, roughly speaking, the labor force. Their number has increased radically. In the past decade alone, it has grown by around half a million to just under five million at present. The reasons: Women have entered the labor market, and foreign workers are crowding into Austria. If there had been a hundred workers in Austria in 1995, their number would now be 134.
And then there is productivity, i.e. how much in goods and services Austria's workers produce in their working hours. Although they work no more hours today than they did decades ago, they produce much more over the same period. If employees had produced products worth one hundred euros in their entire working time in 1995, they would have produced 140 euros today.
What do all these figures mean? The same number of hours as in the past is now distributed among many more heads. And what's more, they generate much more in this time. In other words, the reduction in working hours that Babler and other advocates invoke is not really a utopia - it has long since taken place.
Illusion Full-Time
If you divide the total number of hours by that of the workforce, you get 27.9 hours for 2022 - that is, if you will, the real weekly working time of the average employee in the country. This value shows that the 40-hour week as the alleged norm has long been an illusion. Part-time work, on the other hand, in all its varieties, is much more the rule than one might think.
However, the real reduction in working hours does not take place in a planned manner, for example as a result of a change in the law. Instead, it comes about of its own accord, as it were - unregulated and unevenly distributed. According to the AK, Austria's full-time employees, for example, work more hours than in almost any other EU country: 40.8 hours to be precise. Only Sweden and Cyprus are even higher. Conversely, the proportion of part-time employees in Austria is extremely high. According to Statistik Austria, a full 30.5 percent work part-time - with an extreme gender imbalance: 12.6 percent of men worked part-time in 2022, while 50.7 percent of women did so.
We have been working shorter hours for a long time
What does this mean? A statutory reduction in working hours would not shorten work that much - it is already quite short. Rather, it would be more evenly distributed. Many women who currently work part-time would slide up to full-time, along with all the financial and legal benefits. Conversely, full-time employees would work less.
Keynes, at any rate, was wrong only at first glance with his 1930 prophecy. Only in his belief that 15 hours a week would be enough did he prove overly optimistic in retrospect. Fundamentally, however, Keynes correctly estimated that far fewer hours of work would one day be enough to generate a high level of prosperity, goods and services.
However, the economist certainly did not expect the reduction in hours to be so unplanned. (Joseph Gepp, 5/27/2023)
S | A
Joseph Gepp
May 27, 2023, 12:00
The essay written by the British economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930 is a slim seven pages long and was to become one of the most influential texts in economics. In "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," Keynes predicted that in about a hundred years, thanks to economic advancement and progress, we will hardly need to work at all. Specifically, three hours a day or 15 hours a week would be enough, Keynes wrote. By 2030, he said, people's main concern will be "filling leisure time."
By now, the century has almost passed. Keynes, it seems, was radically wrong. At least there is no trace of a 15-hour week far and wide.
The healthy full-time
Nevertheless, the topic of reducing working hours is currently celebrating a renaissance in Austria. The idea has moved up the political agenda, among other things since SPÖ presidential candidate Andreas Babler brought up the idea of a 32-hour week with full wage compensation. In Salzburg, too, the KPÖ campaigned for a reduction in working hours before the last regional election in April - and scored a historic success.
The Chamber of Labor (AK) has been advocating a "new, healthy full-time" for some time, as it puts it, and points to a survey according to which 82 percent of the population would like fewer hours per week. Even if parts of the employers' association are strongly opposed - the Federation of Austrian Industry (IV), for example, warns against "downright absurd" proposals in view of a "massive shortage of labor and skilled workers" - the issue is on the table.
Reason enough to ask: What became of Keynes' 1930 prophecy? The world, it seems, has not turned out at all as he thought. Why not? Initially, it seemed as if things were going in exactly the direction Keynes had in mind. In Austria, as in other Western countries, working hours became successively shorter. In this country, for example, the statutory working week fell from 48 to 45 hours in 1959; from 45 to 43 hours in 1970; from 43 to 40 hours in 1975. But that was the end of it, by and large. Later, many collective agreements went down a bit, to 38.5 hours per week. But the trend toward shorter working hours across the board was broken. And this has been the case for almost five decades.
Trend broken
So what has happened? Where did the national economy veer off the path that the economist Keynes had foreseen?
If you want to understand, you have to dig through Statistics Austria's figures. It collects the so-called labor volume: the total number of all hours worked in Austria per year. In 2022, this amounted to around 7.2 billion hours.
The amazing thing about this figure is that it has hardly changed in recent decades. Five years ago, it was about the same as it is today; five years ago, it was slightly lower, at just under seven billion hours. If the volume of work in 1995, the year of Austria's accession to the EU, were set at 100, we would be at just 114 today (see chart). In other words, we are hardly working any more than we did decades ago.
Reducing working hours as a reality
However, this stagnating volume of work contrasts with other developments that are more dynamic. First of all, there is the total number of jobs in the country, in other words, roughly speaking, the labor force. Their number has increased radically. In the past decade alone, it has grown by around half a million to just under five million at present. The reasons: Women have entered the labor market, and foreign workers are crowding into Austria. If there had been a hundred workers in Austria in 1995, their number would now be 134.
And then there is productivity, i.e. how much in goods and services Austria's workers produce in their working hours. Although they work no more hours today than they did decades ago, they produce much more over the same period. If employees had produced products worth one hundred euros in their entire working time in 1995, they would have produced 140 euros today.
What do all these figures mean? The same number of hours as in the past is now distributed among many more heads. And what's more, they generate much more in this time. In other words, the reduction in working hours that Babler and other advocates invoke is not really a utopia - it has long since taken place.
Illusion Full-Time
If you divide the total number of hours by that of the workforce, you get 27.9 hours for 2022 - that is, if you will, the real weekly working time of the average employee in the country. This value shows that the 40-hour week as the alleged norm has long been an illusion. Part-time work, on the other hand, in all its varieties, is much more the rule than one might think.
However, the real reduction in working hours does not take place in a planned manner, for example as a result of a change in the law. Instead, it comes about of its own accord, as it were - unregulated and unevenly distributed. According to the AK, Austria's full-time employees, for example, work more hours than in almost any other EU country: 40.8 hours to be precise. Only Sweden and Cyprus are even higher. Conversely, the proportion of part-time employees in Austria is extremely high. According to Statistik Austria, a full 30.5 percent work part-time - with an extreme gender imbalance: 12.6 percent of men worked part-time in 2022, while 50.7 percent of women did so.
We have been working shorter hours for a long time
What does this mean? A statutory reduction in working hours would not shorten work that much - it is already quite short. Rather, it would be more evenly distributed. Many women who currently work part-time would slide up to full-time, along with all the financial and legal benefits. Conversely, full-time employees would work less.
Keynes, at any rate, was wrong only at first glance with his 1930 prophecy. Only in his belief that 15 hours a week would be enough did he prove overly optimistic in retrospect. Fundamentally, however, Keynes correctly estimated that far fewer hours of work would one day be enough to generate a high level of prosperity, goods and services.
However, the economist certainly did not expect the reduction in hours to be so unplanned. (Joseph Gepp, 5/27/2023)
S | A
