Days of Work Over a Half Century: The Rise of the Four-day Week

Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle

No 30106, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine patterns of work in the U.S. from 1973-2018 with the novel focus on days per week, using intermittent CPS samples and one ATUS sample. Among full-time workers the incidence of four-day work tripled during this period, with over 8 million more full-time workers on four-day weeks. The same growth occurred in the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea. The rise was not due to changes in demographics or industrial structure. Four-day full-time work is more common among less educated, younger, and white non-Hispanic workers, among men, natives, and people with young children; and among police and firefighters, health-care workers, and in eating/drinking places. Based on an equilibrium model of its prevalence, we show that it results more from workers’ preferences and/or daily fixed costs of working than from employers' production costs. We verify the implication that the wage penalty for four-day work is greater where such work is more prevalent, and we show that the penalty has diminished over time.

JEL-codes: J11 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-his, nep-lma and nep-ltv
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Published as Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle, “Days of Work over a Half Century: The Rise of the Four-Day Workweek.” ILR Review Volume 78, Issue 1

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Working Paper: Days of Work over a Half Century: The Rise of the Four-Day Week (2022)
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