When we look back at the pandemic experience, we will realize that one of the most unusual and radical policies enacted by governments was to pay people to stay out of work. Whether by personal choice or public policy people had to separate themselves from lots of non-essential jobs that required physical interaction. To support the livelihoods of these people governments chose to either subsidize wages, as in Europe, so workers would nominally continue to be employed, or extend unemployment benefits after they were laid off, as it happened in the US. As a result, 2020 will arguably register as the year with the lowest number of working hours in recent memory.
So, the question is why did we need a severe health crisis to lessen the work burden? Why don’t we proactively finance leisure and work holidays? Why don’t we work less? The answer is a long and interesting story that has to do with the unintended consequences of human “progress.”
Let’s first look at some numbers about work. (The data come from Our World In Data of Oxford University.) It is estimated that around the year 1870 people in western countries (for which we have data), like Germany, France, the UK, Sweden and the US, worked more than 3000 hours annually on average. By 2017, the number had fallen in all these countries, with Germany recording an average of 1370 hours and the US an average of 1750. The reason the US ranks high in working hours among western economies is the low number of “paid time off” for vacation, holidays, sick, maternal and paternal leave.
We also know that working hours move in opposite direction relative to labor productivity. As more goods are produced per working hour, people need to work less to produce the same or even more output. The major factor behind this inverse relationship is, of course, technology which increases labor productivity.
Here are some data on changes in productivity and number of working hours between 1970 and 2017 from the same source.* In the US, productivity increased by 117% and working hours fell by 12%; in Germany, productivity went up by 347% and working hours went down by 44%; in the UK, productivity rose by 166% and working hours declined by 27%. Indeed, we see that productivity gains are associated with fewer hours of work per worker. But we also see another important pattern. The decline in work hours is relatively far smaller than the increase in productivity. Why is this so? I can think of two main culprits. One is our desire to accumulate wealth and its unequal distribution. Since 1970, the overwhelming gains from productivity improvement have gone to a miniscule fraction of the population, not only in the US, but also in other countries, including Nordic countries and China. This forces the majority of people to work more to make ends meet.
The second and more insidious culprit is our growing number of wants or non-essential needs. There is a name for this: “the malady of infinite aspirations.” China fits this paradigm quite well. Since 1970, productivity in China has risen by 517%! But the number of working hours instead of falling, it has gone up by 10%. I suppose that starting from a very low level of material goods, the Chinese had to work longer, despite their productivity gains, in order to close their aspirational gap with Westerners.
Given the strong work culture we observe around the world, one would expect that people like what they do. Not true. Gallup surveys in 155 countries conducted from 2014 to 2016 show that only 15% of workers feel to be engaged in their job. Not only that. Even in modern times, work exposes workers of all types of jobs to risks of physical and mental harm, to family, and social problems. Some of that is self-inflicted due to workaholism, a diagnosable condition. Most of the risks, however, are due to pressure from employers and exacting working conditions. We have recently read about the tight working schedules of Amazon workers.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Frederick Taylor founded scientific management to promote industrial efficiency. This turned the production process into automatic, codified small tasks to be followed with religious exactness by workers. Thus, work was regimented. But, in a telling sign of how humans “enslave” themselves, modern consumers do not simply desire ever more new products and services; they also demand cheaper and better-quality products, and faster delivery. Under unrelenting consumer demand, companies succeed or fail depending on how well they meet consumer whims. We have become, therefore, our own worst enemy in how we use work. We have literally turn ourselves from masters of our work load and schedule to being serfs to our outsized wants and aggrandizing consumer experiences.
It was not always like this. To turn again to our underappreciated ancestors, those scrappy hunter-gatherers, studies of still surviving indigenous communities show that they need to work only about 20 hours per week to cover their few basic needs. (Being immune of our insatiable needs, that’s all they have to work for.) The advent of farming, cities, division of labor, and delayed consumption (through wealth accumulation) raised the number of working hours far above those necessary for hunter-gatherers. By the end of the 19th century and after two industrial revolutions, the work burden had risen even further, including child labor. Laws, unionization, and technology eventually reduced the work burden, at least with respect to time, and that’s why we now have the lower numbers of working hours I cited above.
Still though, we have allowed work to become part of human nature. We indoctrinate children with a glorified work ethic. Many of us don’t know how to enjoy leisure time. And many postpone retirement for fear of work withdrawal symptoms. Paradoxically, even well-paid professionals overwork themselves. Thus, most of modern human civilization and modus operandi revolves around our work responsibilities and schedules.
The utopia of a post-work future thanks to technology will never come as long as our malady of infinite aspirations continues and intensifies and outpaces the relief from technology. It is possible that eventually an all-encroaching work culture will alter our genetic predisposition to resemble that of bees and ants which are programmed for a life of incessant and steady work.
Gaining control over our dependence on work may be a lot harder than we think.
* Productivity is measured in dollars adjusted for inflation and differences of purchasing power across countries.
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