 The economic effects of the 1920 eight-hour working day reform in SwedenErik Bengtsson and Jakob Molinder Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2017, vol. 65, issue 2, 149-168 Abstract: In 1920, the working day in Swedish manufacturing and services was cut from 10 to 8 hours without wages being cut correspondingly. Since workers demanded and got the same daily wage working 8 hours as they had with 10, real hourly wages increased dramatically; they were about 50% higher in 1921–1922 than they had been in 1919. This is the largest wage push in Swedish history, and this paper studies the consequences for profits, investments, capital intensity and unemployment. In traded manufacturing employers responded by increasing capital intensity and did not compensate for rising wages by raising prices, which led to a combination of jobless growth and low profit rates in the 1920s. Firms in non-traded manufacturing and services could raise prices and conserve profitability to a higher degree. In total, the effects of the reform were pro-labour. We discuss the implications for our understanding of interwar wages and employment, the literature on the decrease in inequality found in most industrial countries around 1920 and the rise of the ‘Swedish model’ in the 1920s and 1930s. Date: 2017 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:sehrxx:v:65:y:2017:i:2:p:149-168 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/03585522.2017.1290673 Access Statistics for this article Scandinavian Economic History Review is currently edited by Espen Ekberg and Francisco Beltran Tapia More articles in Scandinavian Economic History Review from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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