Don't look now, but we should soon have the 30-hour work week as the standard, instead of the 40-hour work week last enshrined during FDR's New Deal. Why, when Americans now work more hours than any other developed country?
There are a number of good reasons, and they have little to do with the ACA, or Obamacare, which has decreed that 30 hours per week is considered to be full time employment for large businesses that are required to offer insurance coverage to their employees.
But it has a lot to do with the labor slack in our job market that Fed Chair Yellen has been talking so much about, and the declining health and welfare of American workers. Thanks to the tech revolution and huge productivity gains of those past 30 years, fewer workers are needed to do the same amount of work in the digital world. So if fewer workers are needed to do the same work, then why are more employees working overtime?
Maybe because no policy maker in America has thought through the consequences. What would it mean to share the workload with more people? The Germans certainly have done something about it. Rather than fire employees when times were tough in Germany's last recession, firms hit hardest by the reduction in demand reduced their employees' working hours to spread the pain.
And, the four-day workweek is nearly standard in the Netherlands, especially among working moms, according to a CNN Money article. Overall, the entire workforce averages around 29 hours a week -- the lowest of any industrialized nation, according to the OECD.
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