Why the 30-hour work week is almost here
Staff in the developed world opt for a better work-life balance
● A friend who recruits for an investment bank grumbled to me recently about millennial job applicants. He said that at interviews they ask questions like: “Can I leave early on Friday afternoons to go to yoga?”
Surveys have shown that most millennials don’t want to work all hours. In recent studies by Deloitte and career-monitoring website Comparably, young workers placed “work-life balance” above career progression. Millennials want to get home on time to raise their kids — or at least play Nintendo.
During the economic crisis, any employer who got asked about yoga could simply titter and bin the job-seeker’s CV. There was always a more desperate candidate. That’s changing: with the global economy growing at its fastest since 2011, qualified job seekers are scarce. Finally, they can make demands.
IG Metall, Germany’s biggest trade union, just struck a deal allowing its members to work 28-hour weeks for up to two years, typically when they have small children. Childcare clearly isn’t just a women’s issue any more: most IG Metall members are men.
True, Germany is something of a workers’ paradise. But if other national economies keep growing, working hours will soon move up the agenda there too. During booms, more people want to trade money for time.
The post-2008 crisis has finally ended. Average wages are now above pre-crisis levels in all developed countries except the UK and Greece. The eurozone’s jobless rate is the lowest and US wage growth the fastest since 2009.
The average worker in the developed world now earns more than ever before. More than that, they have an inherited sense of security that previous generations lacked.
Picture somebody born in a Western country in 1980. Their grandfather, born about 1930, worked long hours in a factory. Their father, born in 1955, worked slightly shorter hours in an office. They are the third generation to make their career after World War 2, which means living above mere sub- sistence level. They can also probably expect an inheritance.
Though precariousness remains, today’s average worker has enough money to cope. What they lack in this age of helicopter parenting and constant work messages is time.
Work-life balance is typically discussed as a personal issue. Self-help gurus tend to recommend life hacks: quit Facebook, ignore most e-mails, install a meditation app. Yet, as Anne-Marie Slaughter argues in her book Unfinished Business, it’s not the worker who needs to change. It’s the system.
Germany has been the trendsetter. In 1960, the average West German employee’s working year was 2 163 hours. Today, it’s 1 363 hours, the lowest of all developed countries. And when Germans go home in mid-afternoon, lots are genuinely free. Many leading companies limit after-work e-mails.
IG Metall has taken another step towards work-life balance. Admittedly, IG Metall’s members are well placed to make demands. The German metals industry is just about the most booming sector in Europe’s most booming country. But IG Metall deals tend to set benchmarks.
Other workaholic countries are also easing off. South Korea, China and Thailand have limited school homework.
Now South Korea’s government wants to cut average annual working hours to less than 1 800, from 2 069 in 2016 — the most for any high-income country ranked by the OECD. South Korea’s plan remains mostly talk, but any government that improves Korean lives should win millennial votes.
Only the US has found a lasting way to make well-off employees work all hours into old age: take away their healthcare insurance if they stop. Yet even there, things may change. Amazon is piloting technical teams that work 30-hour weeks for three-quarters of the pay of 40-hour employees.
Shorter hours won’t help the poorest-paid workers, who can’t afford to work less, or elite workers, who generally love their work and can hire help for household tasks. But for the broad middle in rich countries, a new working life is emerging.
The basic work week will shorten, and workers will scale down when they have kids or aged parents to look after. By contrast, in calmer phases of life they will work more: IG Metall’s deal makes it easier to scale up from the standard 35 hours to 40.
Such flexibility should eventually kill off the “mommy track”, which punishes a woman all through her 45-year career for the few years she spends child-rearing.
The future of work could look like Germany: short workdays, high productivity and a booming yoga sector.
Shorter hours won’t help the poorest-paid workers, who can’t afford to work less