Over 3,300 employees from 70 British companies started participating in a four-day workweek pilot program on Monday.
The initiative — led by nonprofits 4 Day Week Global, 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and Autonomy — will last for six months. Employees will receive full pay despite working only 80% of their usual week, with the promise of maintaining 100% of their productivity. Participating businesses range across several industries, with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Boston College monitoring the results.
“After the pandemic, people want a work-life balance,” Joe Ryle, the campaign director for the 4 Day Week Campaign, said in an interview with The New York Times. “They want to be working less.”
American lawmakers have floated permanent proposals similar to the one modeled in the pilot. In California, for example, legislators introduced a bill that would reduce the workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours for companies with more than 500 employees. Those who work more than 32 hours would receive time and a half pay.
David Bahnsen, the founder of Manhattan-based wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, told The Daily Wire that the United States has seen a “deterioration in regard for work” since the recession of 2008.
“I do not believe it could last, though, as places that refuse to get on board will so substantially out-produce and out-perform those that do implement such folly that market forces would deal with it accordingly,” he predicted.
Labor force participation rates dropped from 66% in 2008 to 63% in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The metric dropped another 3% between February 2020 and April 2020 alone as COVID-19 led to government lockdowns and business closures. As of May 2022, labor force participation is 62.3%. Men, in particular, have seen a gradual disengagement from the labor force since the end of World War II.
Bahnsen characterizes the phenomenon as originating in culture rather than market conditions.
“What has changed in Western culture about work has been a change in the culture creating a change in labor markets — not a change in labor markets adjusting the culture,” he explained. “The cause and effect is important here. Greater secularization, especially post-1960s, has led to a decline in regard for work.”
Yet the phenomenon has not applied equally to all strata of society.
“Where there has been a higher regard for social norms and achievement, the high regard for careerism and work has stayed robust,” Bahnsen continued. “The top 20% in socioeconomic metrics have a high regard for work, where the value placed on the dignity of work and the value of work has declined in the lower 80%.”
Even after economic growth resumed in 2020 and the labor market quickly began to recover, a federal program offering $300 in weekly enhanced unemployment insurance remained intact in roughly half of states through much of 2021. According to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the benefits significantly increased the number of Americans who were unwilling to work, as indicated by data from states that prematurely nixed the program in favor of faster labor market recovery.
“Western Europe has led the way down in this regard and the U.S. is somewhat trying to catch up, but gratefully not at a rapid pace,” Bahnsen said of negative cultural attitudes toward work. “Where there is high regard for work today is in pockets of South America and southeast Asia.”