Labor Day has come and gone, which means that most Americans returned to their workplaces today. For many people, the nature of those workplaces has changed significantly in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. These days, there are more people working from home or participating in a hybrid model. There’s also the gig economy, freelance, and contract-based work, plus the unpaid work of stay-at-home parents and family caregivers.
Some companies have experimented with adopting a four-day workweek, arguing that fewer workdays can actually increase both employee satisfaction and productivity. However, the standard working schedule for most full-time employees remains five days or 40 hours a week.
The current workweek came about as a result of nearly a century of labor movement efforts to reduce working hours. For much of the 19th century, many Americans worked 60 hours per week (or more) in oppressive conditions, not to mention the millions of enslaved people who often worked even more hours, without compensation. Many credit Ford Motor Company CEO Henry Ford with kickstarting the move to a five-day, 40-hour workweek in 1926, when he extended this schedule to all employees.
However, before the 40-hour workweek became federal law, the United States came surprisingly close to instituting a 30-hour workweek. In 1933, during the Great Depression and at the start of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would temporarily shorten the workweek to 30 hours. The idea was that working fewer hours would drive down unemployment, as everyone would have some work. Though President Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins supported the idea, it was firmly rejected by business leaders who worried that workers would prefer the 30-hour workweek, even with fewer earnings, and the law would become permanent.
Eventually, Roosevelt’s recovery plan pivoted towards creating more jobs rather than sharing existing jobs, with a massive public works program leading to the creation of New Deal agencies like the Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The 30-hour workweek became merely a threat to get business leaders on board with Roosevelt’s eventual plan to institute a 40-hour workweek, ban child labor, and set a minimum wage.
“Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will”:
- Although employers can claim certain exemptions, the 40-hour workweek has been U.S. law since 1940, thanks to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Employees working more than 40 hours per week are required to receive a minimum of 1.5 times the regular pay rate.
- In subsequent decades, many have predicted that a shorter workweek would be adopted, including Vice President Richard Nixon in 1956, who thought that a four-day workweek of 32 hours would be coming in the “near future.”
- In Congress, U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) has twice introduced legislation to implement the 32-hour workweek. However, with the average full-time male employee working 8.4 hours a day (according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2021), moving to a federally mandated shorter workweek doesn’t appear to be on the cards particularly soon.
