I'm aware that the standard working hours per week have gone down over time for the average person, but it seems that this decrease has in no way been commensurate to the radical increases in productivity which firms have experienced.
Why haven't weekly working hours gone drastically down in the past 100 years or so, despite drastic increases in productivity?
byu/Sure_Leadership_8172 inAskEconomics
Posted by Sure_Leadership_8172
3 Comments
The more fun thing is to see what’s happened to child rearing time, household production time, and leisure time over those same centuries.
The first 2 have massively fallen, while the last has risen considerably.
Edit: I’m sorry. Rude of me to not answer. I will do so now.
Here is the best “working time data I’ve seen”.
https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
US annual work has declined from about 3,100 hours per year (8.5 hours per day if you worked every day) in 1870 to about 1,800 (4.93 hours per day). 100 years ago, we’re still looking at Americans working 25% less.
So, maybe some of the productivity gains for workers not matching up with wages is lesser work time.
But also, why should there be a 1 to 1 relationship between productivity and hours worked? Capital is rarely a perfect substitute for labor.
Hedonic treadmill is the primary term you are looking for.
I personally also think that there is something like economies of scale going on. Working hours shouldn’t necessarily be measured by the week but the life for this question. I personally got to fuck around in school until I was like 28 and I’d probably be able to retire at 50 and maintain well more than my grandfathers retirement.
By revealed preference, the vast majority of workers prefer to consume more instead of working fewer hours. You could reduce your hours (to a certain point) if you are okay with maintaining a 40s or 50s standard of living, but the reality is that very few people prefer that lifestyle over working a 9-5.