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We have the tools and the technology to work less — and live better as a result John Maynard Keynes and the five-day week; how did we come up with five on, two off...? TOBY PHILLIPS investigates IN 1930, a year into the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write about the economic possibilities of his grandchildren. Despite widespread gloom as the global economic order fell to its knees, the British economist remained upbeat, saying that the “prevailing world depression … blind[s] us to what is going on under the surface”. In his essay, he predicted that in 100 years' time, ie 2030, society would have advanced so far that we would barely need to work. The main problem confronting countries such as Britain and the United States would be boredom, and people might need to ration out work in “three-hour shifts or a 15-hour week [to] put off the problem”. At first glance, Keynes
John Maynard Keynes with Lydia Lopokova 42
‘World depression blinds us to what is going on under the surface’ seems to have done a woeful job of predicting the future. In 1930, the average worker in the US, the UK, Australia and Japan spent 45 to 48 hours at work. Today, that is still up around 38 hours. LEGENDARY STATURE Keynes has a legendary stature as one of the fathers of modern economics — responsible for much of how we think about monetary and fiscal policy. He is also famous for his quip at economists who deal only in longterm predictions: “In the long run, we are all dead.” And his 15-hour working week prediction might have been more on the mark than it first appears. If we wanted to produce as much as Keynes's countrymen did in the 1930s, we wouldn't need everyone to work even 15 hours per week. If you adjust for increases in labour productivity, it could be done in seven or eight hours, 10 in Japan. These increases in productivity come from a century of automation and technological advances: allowing us to produce more stuff
with less labour. In this sense, modern developed countries have way overshot Keynes prediction — we need to work only half the hours he predicted to match his lifestyle. WORKPLACE EFFICIENCY The progress over the past 90 years is not only apparent when considering workplace efficiency, but also when taking into account how much leisure time we enjoy. First consider retirement: a deal with yourself to work hard while you're young and enjoy leisure time when you're older. In 1930, most people never reached retirement age, simply labouring until they died. Today, people live well past retirement, living a third of their life workfree. If you take the work we do while we're young and spread it across a total adult lifetime, it works out to less than 25 hours per week. There's a second factor that boosts the amount of leisure time we enjoy: a reduction in housework. The ubiquity of washing machines, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens means that the average US household does almost 30 hours less housework per week than in the 1930s. This 30 hours isn't all converted into pure leisure. Indeed, some of it has been converted into regular work, as more women — who shoulder the major share of unpaid domestic labour — have moved into the paid labour force. The important thing is that, thanks to progress in productivity and efficiency, we all have more
